DOI article:
Raleigh, Walter Alexander: Poet and historian: a dialogue
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27811#0366
Poet and Historian
364
JYn?. You ought to have been a teacher of heraldry to decayed
noblemen's sons in a mediaeval university. I do not want to
startle you when I say that the Renaissance came four hundred
years ago and brought in the reign of positive knowledge. Since
that time the very artists have given up symbolism except as a
game. Listen to a contemporary critic upon Michel Angelo :
" Darkness and imperfection are infinite, indeterminate, confused,
unknown, and can never be understood ; light and perfection are
Unite, determinate, distinct, easily known and seized upon by the
intelligence of man." In your anxiety to avoid the clearness of
the perfect you would plunge back into a morass of superstition
and mysticism; you care for no picture but a hieroglyph, and
value a bunch of spring Rowers only as a lexicon whence you may
compose your vague messages of sentimental inanity. Queen
Anne, they say, is dead. Everything in due time, I have the
happiness to inform you that she was born.
Your choice of queens betrays you. The eighteenth
century is gone, and has taken its historians and encyclopaedists
along with it. It has left a few poets—William Blake for one,
who questioned not his corporeal eye any more than he would
have questioned a window concerning a sight. He looked
through it and not with it. It is this looking through the eye
that constitutes metaphor. But it does not draw vagueness in its
train. The same Blake remarks that only an idiot has a general
knowledge, the knowledge of wise men is of particulars—and so
perfectly definite.
Efbf. It is late ; and I must lose the ten tribes by next week.
My publisher will not wait. The moonbeams are playing on
your head—which statement I reach by inference, not by vision.
Next time we meet let us talk about something we can agree
upon.
364
JYn?. You ought to have been a teacher of heraldry to decayed
noblemen's sons in a mediaeval university. I do not want to
startle you when I say that the Renaissance came four hundred
years ago and brought in the reign of positive knowledge. Since
that time the very artists have given up symbolism except as a
game. Listen to a contemporary critic upon Michel Angelo :
" Darkness and imperfection are infinite, indeterminate, confused,
unknown, and can never be understood ; light and perfection are
Unite, determinate, distinct, easily known and seized upon by the
intelligence of man." In your anxiety to avoid the clearness of
the perfect you would plunge back into a morass of superstition
and mysticism; you care for no picture but a hieroglyph, and
value a bunch of spring Rowers only as a lexicon whence you may
compose your vague messages of sentimental inanity. Queen
Anne, they say, is dead. Everything in due time, I have the
happiness to inform you that she was born.
Your choice of queens betrays you. The eighteenth
century is gone, and has taken its historians and encyclopaedists
along with it. It has left a few poets—William Blake for one,
who questioned not his corporeal eye any more than he would
have questioned a window concerning a sight. He looked
through it and not with it. It is this looking through the eye
that constitutes metaphor. But it does not draw vagueness in its
train. The same Blake remarks that only an idiot has a general
knowledge, the knowledge of wise men is of particulars—and so
perfectly definite.
Efbf. It is late ; and I must lose the ten tribes by next week.
My publisher will not wait. The moonbeams are playing on
your head—which statement I reach by inference, not by vision.
Next time we meet let us talk about something we can agree
upon.