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I. A. Richards and "Practical Criticism"

Author(s): Cleanth BrooksSource: The Sewanee Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Fall, 1981), pp. 586-595Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27543909 .

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THE STATE OF LETTERS

THE CRITICS

WHO

MADE US

I.

A.

RICHARDS

AND

PRACTICAL

CRITICISM

CLEANTH BROOKS

I

became

aware

of

I. A.

Richards

during

my

first academic

year

at

Oxford,

1929-30.

As

I

remember,

it

was

Robert

Penn

Warren,

then

at

Oxford

also,

who

called

my

attention

to

Principles

of

Literary

Criticism

(1924)

and Practical

Criticism

(1929).

I

read

both

books

eagerly.

In

Practical

Criticism

I

was

particularly

interested

in

the

students'

com

ments

on

thirteen

selected

poems.

Richards had

omitted

the titles

of

the

poems

and

the

names

of their authors

to

see

what

the

students

could

make

of

the naked

texts.

If their

many

blundering

misreadings

shook

my

confidence

in

what

I

myself might

have

done,

Richards's

masterly

comments on their

performances compelled

my

admiration.

His

comments

were

always

deft

and

sure,

never

heavy-handed.

With

Principles

I

encountered

more

difficult

going.

What

Richards

had

to

say

was

exciting,

but

I

resisted the

new

psychological

termi

nology

as

well

as

the

confident

positivism

of

the author. Nevertheless

the book

could

not

be dismissed.

I

had

to

cope

with it?to

try

to form

an

adequate

answer

to it?or

else

capitulate.

The

result

was

that

I read

Principles

perhaps

a

dozen

times

during

that

first

year

of

acquaintance?and

profited

from

the

experience.

For

the kind

of

reading

that

I

practiced

in

trying

to

find

a

sound basis

for

rejecting

what

Richards

had

written

was

intense

reading,

the

sort

from

which

one

learns.

If

I

did

not

gain

an

understanding

of

Richards's whole

system,

an

understanding

so

clear

that

it

compelled

acceptance,

I

did

at

least

sharpen

my

insights,

ways

of

perceiving,

and

methods of

analysis.

Later

on

in

that

academic

year

I

had

an

opportunity

to test

my

knowledge

of

Richards's work. He

was

invited to lecture

in

the hall

of

my

Oxford

college,

Exeter;

and

for

the

first

time

I

saw

him and

heard

his

voice.

I

had insisted

that

several

of

my

friends attend the

lecture

with

me,

and

to

my

surprise

I

found

that,

while I

could

follow

clearly

the

argument,

to

my

friends

it

was

almost

incomprehensible.

?

1981.

Cleanth

Brooks.

0037-3052/81/1015-0586/$00.95/0.







THE

STATE

OF

LETTERS

587

They

lacked

the

necessary

preparation

for

what

was

a

pioneering

effort

that

broke

with

the

literary training

of

the time?with

the

traditional

British

training

as

well

as

the

American.

Years

elapsed

before

I

made Richards's

personal acquaintance

in

1940,

when he lectured

in

Baton

Rouge.

Afterward

I

was

to

see

him

on

a

number

of

occasions?at

Yale,

at

Harvard,

at

Wesleyan,

and

as

our

guest

in

Northford, Connecticut,

so

that

I

was

able

to

experience

at

first

hand

his

charm and

human warmth

as

well

as

the

power

of

his

mind. But

my

subject

in

this

essay

is

his

two

early

seminal

books,

and

I shall try to stick to those texts, especially Practical Criticism.

To

read

Practical

Criticism

today

is

still

an

exciting

experience.

Much

is

familiar,

to

be

sure;

but

one's

changed perspective provides

fresh

in

sights.

What

a

successful

ground-breaking

effort

it

was

How

fresh

and

new

the

"methods" were How

important

were

the

book's effects

in

changing

our

views

of

reading

in

general

and of

reading

poetry

in

par

ticular.

The

influence of the book has been

powerful

and

pervasive.

Yet

the

influence

has

proved

very

different

from

what

Richards

had

probably

intended.

To

oversimplify

a

bit:

the

practical

effect of

Richards's

discussion

of

his

thirteen selected

poems

was

almost

overpowering,

and

was

to

make its fortune in the world of letters. The theoretical

aspect

of the

work,

however,

was

another

matter.

This

is

not

to

say

that

Richards's

insights

and

frequent

generalizations

about

the

status

and

nature

of

poetry

were

not

influential.

They

were

indeed.

It

was

Richards's

psy

chological

machinery

that

got

in

the

way

for

me

and for

many

other

theorists.

But

more

of

that

later.

Now

in

1981

the actual

readings

and

misreadings

of

the

thirteen

poems

still

seem

fascinating,

and

Richards's

own

comments

have

held

up

extraordinarily

well.

The

errors

made

by

these

Cambridge

honors

students

are

set

forth

devastatingly though

not

contemptuously.

If

gold

could

rust

to

this

degree,

then

what

could be

expected

of

more

abun

dant

baser

metals?

The

student comments were

written in

the

middle

and

late

1920s.

Has

the

situation

improved

after

some

fifty

years

of

textbooks

heavily

influenced

by

Richards's

findings?

Perhaps

so,

but

in

my

more

somber

moods

I

wonder. The

terminology

used

in

such

discussions

has

changed,

but the

use

of

jargon

and

a

mechanical

application

of

whatever critical

terms

are

used exhibit

a

hardy

persistence.

I

speak,

however,

for

Ameri

can

students

only.

I

do

not

know

how

much

British

teaching

has

im

proved,

or

whether it

has

improved

at

all.

In

addition

to

blind

spots,

crippling preconceptions,

and

general

ineptitude, the students' comments on the thirteen poems reveal

deep

seated cultural

habits.

Among

other

things

they

show

that

the

British

students

were

far

more

widely

acquainted

with

English

(and

classical)

literature

than

were

American

students of

the

time?or

even

than

most







588

THE STATE

OF

LETTERS

American

students

today.

Moreover

the

British

students showed

a

deep

er

consciousness of

literary

style,

and

they

delighted

in

little

rhetorical

flourishes of their

own.

Such traits

evidently

are

deeply ingrained

in

the

culture:

they

con

tinue

to

reveal

themselves,

for

example,

even

in

the

typical

Oxbridge

don's

review

of

a

novel

or

a

volume

of

poetry

in

the

TLS.

The

effort

to

skip

and

gambol

over

the

page?to

take

almost

any

risk rather than

seem

to

plod along?remains.

For

the

British,

literature

is

still

a

high

minded

game,

and

the

critic

himself

must

write with

a

sense

of

style.

(Let me warn my reader, however, that I am not here confusing the

"literariness" of

the

typical

British don with

the American

deconstruc

tionists

of

today.

The

difference

here

is

radical.)

The

special "literary"

quality

of the

British

students'

comments

was

not,

of

course,

to

Richards's

special

purpose.

He

could

and

did

pretty

much

take

it

for

granted.

He

was

aware,

however,

of

its

absence.

Once

or

twice

he refers

to

a

"transatlantic smack"

from

the

pen

of

some

Ameri

can

student

at

Cambridge.

Differences between

British

and

American

cultural

traits

were

not

his

concern

in

Practical Criticism.

He

stuck

to

his

general

(as

far

as

the

English-speaking

community

was

concerned)

issue

:

the

widespread inability

to

read

sensitively

a

poem

(or

any

other

literary

document)

and

the

matter

of

what,

if

anything,

could

be

done

about

it.

I

have found

in

rereading

Practical

Criticism

that I have

not

bothered

much

with

Richards's

categories

of

misreading?his

elaboration of

them,

that

is.

My

renewed

admiration

has been

for

his

analytical

skill

as

I

observed

him

at

work

with the students'

pronouncements

and

for

his

ability

so

frequently

to

put

his

finger

deftly

and

precisely

on

what

went

wrong

in

each

instance.

He

makes

a

valiant

effort

to

keep

from

imposing

his

own

judgments

on

the

reader

of

Practical

Criticism,

yet

the

good

reader does

not

really

want

him

to succeed.

In

fact

it

would be

impossible

for

him

to

succeed,

for if

one

is

able

to

point

out

a

sufficiency

of

errors

made

by

others,

he

has

at

least

implied

the

general

lineaments

of

a

sound

reading.

Yet

by

employing

his chosen

strategy,

Richards

has

avoided

any

notion

that

he

is

an

armed

knight riding

down

a

peasant

defending

himself

with

no

more

than

a

cudgel

or a

flail.

He

is not

at

all

interested

in

winning

victories

over

petty

opponents,

but

is

seeking

out the truth.

When

we move

from

the

specific

case

studies

of

students

reading

and

misreading

poems

to

the theoretical

parts

of

Richards's

book,

we

do

not

cease

to

admire,

for

there

is

great

wisdom

to

be

found

in

the

latter

half

of

the

book

(parts

3

and

4).

Many

of

Richards's

incidental

comments?as on the

overwhelming

importance of the context of a poem

or

the

damaging

effects

of

sentimentality,

the

perils

of

message-hunting,

the

stultifying

effect

of

stock

responses,

the

wrongheadedness

of

in

sisting

on a

regularity

of

meter

or

of

demanding

that

a

poem

embody

a







THE

STATE

OF LETTERS

589

favorite

doctrine?constitute

precepts

that

are

representative

of

the ad

monitions

urged

in

Practical Criticism.

They

impressed

me

so

much

that

they

made

up

in

part

for

what

I

found difficult

or

distasteful,

particularly

in

Principles.

I

remember that

back

in

the

early

1930s

I

wrote

long

letters

to

John

Ransom and

Allen

T?te

in

which

I

argued

that,

in

spite

of

his

philoso

phy

and

his

terminology,

Richards

was a

perceptive

critic

of

great

power

who,

at

least

in

his

application,

arrived

at

judgments

that

were

almost

wholly

compatible

with theirs and

mine.

These

boyish

letters,

I assume, have mercifully disappeared. I mention them here simply

because

they

tell

something

about

my

early

relation

to Richards's work.

The

letters,

needless

to

say,

did

not

accomplish

what

I

had

hoped they

might.

Ransom

and

T?te

continued

to

maintain

their

objections.

Never

theless,

though

I

cannot

claim

credit

for

it,

both

men

later

on

were

to

become

friendly

with

Richards. Richards's

own

brilliance

as

a

thinker

and

his

charm

and attractiveness

as a

personality

accounted

for

their

liking

and

respect

for

him. I

cannot

recall

anyone

who

failed

to

respond

to

his

charm

or

failed

to

recognize

his

intellectual

gifts.

In

my

own

tussle

with

Richards's

early

books,

my

appropriation

of

his ideas

was,

as

I

have

already

indicated,

highly

selective.

I

was

particularly

impressed

by

his evidence of a

general

need for alertness

in

reading

and

in

sensitivity

to

the

nuances

in

the

text

read.

I

learned?

in

great part

from

him,

I

think?of

the

importance

of

the

context:

that

poetry

was

not

a

verbal

bouquet

of

beautiful

or

exalted

objects

and

ideas.

Words

of

neutral

or

even

unpleasant

associations

might

be

indeed,

often

were?absolutely

necessary

for

the

proper

development

of

the whole

poem.

Some

of these

notions I

had

already

come

to

accept

from

my

reading

of the

Fugitive

poets

at

Vanderbilt?primarily

from

their

poems,

for

in

1928

very

little of

their

criticism

had been

published,

and

the

unpub

lished

was

scarcely

available

to

me.

I

was

not

a

member of the group.

But

Practical Criticism

provided

for

me

critical

commentary

that

spelled

out

the

concepts

and

provided

effective

examples

of

them in

action.

The critical

concept

of

Richards's

that

appealed

particularly

to

me

was

his

notion

of

tension

in

poetry.

It is most

fully

set

forth

in

chapter

32

("The

Imagination")

in

Principles.

There

Richards

makes

a

distinction

between what

he called the

poetry

of

exclusion

and the

finer

and

more

demanding poetry of?again

his

term?inclusion.

In

the first

type

the

poet

wins

his

unity by

excluding

elements that

are

disparate

and recal

citrant;

in

the

second

type

he is

able to

secure

unity

without

having

to

leave such elements out of his poem.

Many

years

later

I

discovered,

quite

by

accident,

that

Richards

had

evidently

derived his terms

from

George

Santayana.

But

in

Richards's

adaptation

the

terms

underwent

radical

changes

of

meaning.

I

have







590

THE

STATE OF

LETTERS

discussed

this

matter

in

some

detail

in

my

contribution

to

the

festschrift

for

Richards

published

in

1973.

There

I

make the

point

that

Richards

had

probably wholly forgotten

that

his

terms

had been

derived from

Santayana.

At

any

rate

he

had

altered the

meanings

of the

terms

very

much for

the

better.

As

used

by

Santayana,

the

poetry

of inclusion

creates

the

beautiful;

that

of

exclusion,

the

more

exalted

poetry

of the

sublime. For

Richards

the

distinction

is

between

a

simpler,

though

quite

sound

and

authentic,

poetry

(that

of

exclusion)

and

a

poetry

that

is

much

more

resonant

and

profound

(that

of

inclusion).

In

my

own use

I greatly extended Richards's concepts and pressed their implications.

I

saw

both

exclusion

and

inclusion

as

ways

for

securing

poetic

unity.

No

poem

could

include

everything;

some

things

had

to be left

out

of

account.

Yet

no

valuable

poem

could

be

built

of

purely

accordant

elements.

Some

process

of

fusion

and

inclusion

was

operative

in

every

poem?even

the

simplest.

The

greatest

and most

powerful

poems

were

those

in

which

the

disparate

and

even

discordant

elements had been

in

cluded

and

successfully

absorbed

into

the total

structure.

Thus

the

uni

fying

and

reconciling

powers

that

Coleridge

attributed to

the

imagi

nation

(and

to

which

Richards

directed

our

attention

in

Principles)

had

to

be

active

in

some

degree

in

any

production

worthy

of

the

name

of

poetry.

It

was

possible,

I

believed,

to

set

up

a

kind

of

scale:

at

the

bottom,

poems

that

relied

heavily

on

the

principle

of

exclusion,

left out

too

much

of

human

experience,

and

so were

thin

and

oversimple.

They

tended

accordingly

toward

sentimentality

and

general

vapidity.

Toward

the

top

of the scale

were

poems

that

used

successfully

a

high degree

of

inclusion. Yet

poems

that

relied

too

heavily

on

the

principle

of

inclusion

had

their

own

characteristic

fault.

The

poem

of

an

overambitious

poet

who tried

to

include

too

much also failed of

unity.

Such

a

poem

re

mained

a

jumble,

an

incoherent wordiness.

Though

I

took

liberties

with

Richards's

original concept,

I

acknowledged my

debt

to

him

and

felt

that

he

and

I

were

still

in

basic

agreement

in

holding

that

the

greatest

and

most

enduring

poetry,

including

tragic poetry,

was

poetry

that

manifested

to

a

high degree

Coleridge's

synthesizing

imagination.

Such

poetry

was

complex, tough-minded,

and,

as

Richards

had

pointed

out,

"invulnerable

to

irony."

In

Modern

Poetry

and

the

Tradition

(1939)

I

made

much

use

of

this

scheme,

though

not

in

what

was

to become for

me

its

most

developed

form.

The

scheme

adopted

seemed

attractive to

me

in

good

part

be

cause

it

did

bring

together

so

many

of

Richards's

concerns.

Thus

it

threw

further

light

on

sentimentality

(a

defect

to

which Richards had

given

much attention). It helped explain why poems that included a good deal

of

realistic

detail

or

a

flick of

irony

were

invulnerable to

sentimentality.

It

even

threw

light

on

the

problem

of

stock

responses,

about

which

Richards

had much to

say.







THE

STATE

OF LETTERS

591

So,

too,

with

regard

to

tone,

the

aspect

of

poetry

discussed

in

detail

in

Practical

Criticism.

Adjustment

of

tone

could

be

considered

a

primary

means

for

qualifying

and

reconciling

the

various "statements"

made

or

implied

in

a

poem.

On

the

other

hand

tone

might

also

be

regarded

as an

index

of

the

poet's

ability

to

organize

and

unify

his

poem.

Indeed

it

was

everywhere

involved

with the

process

of

unifying

those

disparate

(and

even

warring)

elements

which

the

poet

had decided

must

be

included

in

his

poem

for

the

sake

of

its

proper

relation

to

reality.

Lastly

this

matter

of

inclusion?its

importance

and

how

it

might

be

effected?clearly lay at the heart of metaphor. In metaphor we have

the

union

of

terms

that

must

be

disparate

if

we

are

to

feel

any

meta

phorical

power

at

all,

and

yet

in

too

heavily

strained

metaphors

the

terms

fly

apart

and

resist

unification.

Dr.

Johnson

had

put

it

mem

orably?"heterogenous

ideas

yoked

by

violence

together."

The

important

word

is

yoked,

for

what

we

want

in

a

good

metaphor

is

a

sense

not

of

unnatural

binding

but

of

an

inevitable

fusion.

A

recent

rereading

of Modern

Poetry

and the

Tradition

has

reminded

me

how

heavily

that book

leaned

on

Richards's ideas

(as

well

as on

those

of

T.

S. Eliot and

Allen

T?te),

but

it

brings

home

to

me

how

little

of

Richards's

psychological machinery

I

had

found

useful.

I

believe

that

my

rejection

of

it

sprang

from

no

theoretical

sophistication

on

my

part:

instead such

machinery

simply

seemed irrelevant

as

well

as

mystifying.

Others

were

to

justify

quite

explicitly

their dismissal

of Richards's

psychological

machinery.

John

Ransom

made

the

point

that

what

the

reader

had before

him

as

positive

evidence

was

the

text

itself,

not

cer

tain

presumed

goings-on

in

the

reader's

head;

these

latter

were

no

more

than

speculative

inferences.

As Ransom

puts

it

in

his

New

Criti

cism

(1941):

"For

when

we

have

an

elaborate

mental

experience

it

is

the

thoughts,

images,

emotions,

and the

like,

which

constitute the

'hard

facts,' if any, not the neural states; the latter, as far as observation goes,

are

only

their

inferences,

and

have to be

improvised."

Ransom later

points

out

that

ten

years

after the

publication

of

Principles

Richards

had

himself talked

about

"the

imaginary

event

which

he

[had]

assigned

to

his neural

entities,"

for in his

Philosophy

of

Rhetoric

(1936)

Richards

writes:

"At

present

it

is

still

Thought

which

is most

accessible

to

study

and

accessible

largely

through Language.

We

can

all

detect

a

difference

in

our

minds

between

thinking

of

a

dog

and

thinking

of

a

cat.

But

no

neurologist

can."

Another

of

Richards's

distinctions that

was

later to be

questioned

was

that between

communication

and

value.

In

Principles

Richards

broke down the process of

reading

a poem into two

stages.

He asks

(1)

whether

the

poem

communicates

itself

to

the

reader;

and

(2)

whether

what

it

communicates

is

valuable. A

poem

could

thus

fail

in

either of

the two

ways:

it

might

remain

incomprehensible,

in

which

case

the







592

THE STATE

OF

LETTERS

question

of

its

value

could

not be

judged;

but

if

it

does

communicate,

the

reader

may

deem

that

what

the

poem

set

forth

was

not

worth the

effort.

In

Principles

Richards illustrates

by quoting

a

tiny

scrap

of

H. D.'s

imagism

and

a

sonnet

by

Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The H.

D.

poem

fails

to

communicate

what

one must

suppose

the

poet

assumed

to

be

a

valuable

experience.

Though

the

Wilcox

sonnet

communicates

per

fectly,

the

poet's

experience

is

without

value.

W.

K.

Wimsatt

(in

"Explication

as

Criticism")

has

pointed

out

that

the reader can only speculate about the word of an experience which

is

not

available

to

him.

He

may

generously

assume

that the

poet

had

something

valuable to

say,

but

at

best

can

only

give

him

or

her the

benefit of the doubt.

In

short,

communication

and value

cannot

be

profitably

disentangled.

As

for Miss Wilcox's valueless

experience

which

she

has

communi

cated

only

too

well,

Wimsatt

provides

a more

elaborate

commentary.

His

objection

is

this: "Instead of

talking

about

the

poem

to

you

or

to

me,

Mr.

Richards backed

off

and

started

talking

equally

about the

poem

and

about

you

and me?what

[the

poem]

was

going

to

do

to

our

im

pulses

if

they

were

set

in

a

certain

way;

what if

not.

Those remarks

about our

adequate

or

inadequate impulses

were an

opaque

substitute

for

a

discourse

that

could

easily

have

focussed

an

embarrassing

light

on

the

poem

itself."

Richards's

comments

about how the

poem

would

affect

us

were a

needlessly

roundabout

way

of

talking

about

what

is

a

defective

poem.

Wimsatt

sums

up:

"What

was

wrong

with the

poem

was

that

neither

in its

main

explicit

statement

[about

love

and friend

ship]

nor

in

the

implications

of

its

imagistic

parts

. . .

did

it

make

sense."

Again

the

communications

problem

and the value

problem

form and

content,

if

you

prefer?can scarcely

be

separated:

the fact

that the

poem

did

not

make

real

sense

hopelessly

compromised

its

value

as

an

experience.

In

another

passage

Wimsatt

writes:

"Value

is

always implicit

and

in

definable.

It

looks

after itself."

So

it

does,

and

Richards,

as

a

masterful

practical

critic,

demonstrates

that

it

does

in

his

commentary

on

the

thirteen

poems

discussed

by

his students

in Practical

Criticism.

Once

more

his

practical

criticism

tends

to

correct

his

inadequate

theory.

A

second

separation

made

by

Richards

is

much

more

important

than his

separation

of

communication and value. He

distinguishes

be

tween

statements that

actually

make references

and those

that

he

calls

pseudostatements.

These latter

only

appear

to

make

statements.

They

refer

to

nothing.

Their

true

function

is to

satisfy

our

emotional

needs. Genuine references refer to events in the objective world and

can

be verified.

Scientific

statements

are

of

this order.

But,

so

Richards

asserts,

a

poem

does

not

need

to refer

to

anything

in

our

space-time







THE

STATE OF

LETTERS

593

world

or

to

claim to

represent

a

scientifically

verifiable

truth.

Its real?

and

finally

important?end

is

to

give

us

emotional

satisfaction.

This

second

separation

obviously

bears

a

close

relation

to

Richards's

psychological-affective

system.

It too

has

a

certain

plausibility.

Few

of

us

demand

literality

in

poetry.

We

properly

dismiss

as

unimportant

the bad

history

that

Keats

writes in

making

Cortez

the discoverer

of

the

Pacific

Ocean

or

the

bad science

that

Coleridge

offers

in

referring

to

a

star

as

visible

within the

tip

of

a

crescent

moon.

The

attack

on

Richards's second

distinction

came

to

a

head

regarding

pseudostatements.

Could

poetry

derive

any

emotive force from state

ments

which

are

patently

false?

Richards,

of

course,

protested

that

his

pseudostatements

were

not so

much

false

as

simply

no

statements.

They

had

nothing

to

do with verifiable

truth.

Yet if

one

accepted

this

correction,

a

problem

remains:

granted

that

poems

are

not

lies?Sir

Philip

Sidney

long

ago

had said that the

poet

did

not

lie,

for he "affirm

eth

nothing"?granted

that

Richards's

pseudostatements

are

not

false

statements?nevertheless

can

poetry

have

any

emotional

impact

if

we

know

that

it is

simply

an

emotive utterance?

If

it

merely

triggers

still other

emotional

responses

in

a

self-enclosed

system,

will

it not

be

insulated from

life, including

even our

own

emotional

life?

One

is

gratified

to

discover that

Richards

at

times

contradicts

him

self

on

this

very

point,

as

when,

on

page

251

of

Practical

Criticism,

he

casually

remarks:

"If

good

poetry

owes

its

value

in

a

large

measure

to

the

closeness of

its

contact

with

reality,

it

may

thereby

become

a

powerful

weapon

for

breaking

up

unreal ideas and

responses."

So

it

would

seem

that,

after

all,

a

truly

good

poem,

whether

a

tissue

of

pseudostatements

or

not,

does

have

a

relation of

some

"closeness"

to

reality

It

may

be

helpful

to

place

Richards's

two

major

separations

in his

torical

perspective.

In

the seventeenth

century

Ren?

Descartes

made

his

radical distinction between the space-time world about us and man's

inner

world

of

emotion,

fantasies,

and

evaluations. Assertions

about the

space-time

world

could

be

objective,

for

they

were

capable

of

verifiable

measurement

and mathematical

description.

But

assertions

about the

other

world

were

subjective

and

even

idiosyncratic.

Descartes

thus

cleared

the

way

for the

development

of

modern

science,

but

he

was

later

to

be

reproached

for

having,

in

the

process,

cut

the throat of

poetry.

For

if the

poet's

statements

were

simply

expressions

of

his

own

imaginings

and

subjective

interpretations,

who could take

him

seriously

as a

pur

veyor

of

truth?

If

he

wanted to

restate

and

even

embellish truths

en

dorsed

by agencies

that dealt with authentic

truth,

well

and

good.

But

he

had best

not set

up

in

the

truth-telling

business

on

his

own.

The

romantic

poets

were

concerned about this

widening

gap

between

man's

outer

and

inner

worlds,

Wordsworth

and

Coleridge particularly







594

THE

STATE OF

LETTERS

so.

One

remembers

Coleridge

in

old

age

still

mumbling

about

the

union

of

subject

and

object.

It

has,

of

course,

remained

a

prime

issue

in

our

own

day,

one

that

a

T. S.

Eliot

or

a

Wallace

Stevens

attempted

to deal

with,

each

in

his

own

way.

Richards's

solution

to

the

problem

was

heroically

simple.

He

did

not

attempt

to

bridge

the

gap:

on

the

contrary

he

accepted

it

as

a

fact of

life

and

proposed

to

make

a

virtue

of

it.

Science

served

an

indispensable

function

in

our

transactions

with

reality,

but

poetry

also served

an

im

portant

function:

it

could

keep

us

in

mental

health

so

that

we

could

function as sensitive, flexible, resourceful human beings.

This

formulation

is

a

modification

of

that framed

by

Matthew

Arnold.

Indeed,

as

an

epigraph

to

his Science

and

Poetry

(1935),

Richards

quoted

Arnold's

celebrated

prophecy

that

the future

of

poetry

was

immense,

since

it

must now serve

the

function

once

served

by

religion.

For

our

religion

had

"materialized itself

in

the

fact,

in

the

supposed

fact;

it

[had]

attached

its

emotion to

the

fact,

and

now

the

fact

[was]

failing

it.

But

for

poetry

the

idea

[was]

everything."

Richards's solution is

thus

in essence as

old

as

Arnold's,

but

it

may

be,

in

its

general

lineaments,

as

new

as

that

of

our

present-day

decon

structionists,

who

also

seem

to make

poetry purely

self-reflexive. What

primarily

differentiates

Richards's

early

formulation is

its

neurological

account

of what

the

poem

does

or

might

do

to

the

organization

of

the

impulses

of

its

reader's mind.

Yet

some

anomalies

remain:

Richards

could,

and

quite

often

did,

speak

in

a

language markedly

like

that

of

more

old-fashioned

humanists.

I

remember,

for

example,

an

afternoon

at

the

Hill

School

in

which Ran

som,

Richards,

and

I

answered

questions

addressed to

us

by

the

students

and

faculty.

On

this

occasion

we

were

defending

the

place

of

poetry

and

the

importance

of

the

humanities,

and

we

did

so,

as

I

remember

it,

with

little

difference

in

our

doctrines

or

our

vocabularies. Difference

there

was

in

plenty

in

our

personalities, angles

of

approach, and tonali

ties.

Ransom

was

his

quiet,

courtly,

diffident self.

Richards,

without for

a

moment

appearing

aggressive,

was

confident, alert,

the

complete

master

of

the

platform.

I

have

indicated

my

problems

with

Richards's

affective

accounts

of

how

poetry

"works."

But

I

trust

that

my

emphasis

on

my

disagreements

may

serve

as a

warrant

for

the

sincerity

of

my

admiration

for

this

remarkable

man.

I

am

happy

to

give

in

full

measure

to

the

practical

critic

what

I

have

to withhold from

the

theoretician. In

fact

recent

reflections

on

my

conversations

with Richards

and

rereading

his

work

bring

to

my

mind

something

that

a

friend

of

mine

once

remarked

to

me about Freud.

This friend

is

a

psychoanalyst,

high

in

his

profession.

I

had

asked

him how best to

come

to

some

understanding

of Freud's

system.

What

he

told

me

was

mildly

shocking:

he advised

me

not

to

worry

too

much







THE STATE

OF LETTERS

595

about

Freud's

account

of

the

structure

of the mind.

Freud's

theory

of

the

death

wish,

for

example,

had been

pretty

largely

given

up.

What I

ought

to

do,

if

I

were

truly

to understand Freud's

importance,

was

to

read

his

account

of

his

cases?to

observe

the

kind

of

questions

he asked

of the

patient,

his

attention to

the detail of

the

patient's

answers,

his

sensitivity

as

he

probed

his

way,

the delicate

imagination

manifested

in

his

inferences,

and

so on.

Seeing

how the

great

man

would

cope

with

an

individual's

case was

the

best

way

to

realize

the

great

virtues

of this

genius

of

the human

psyche.

Whatever the merits of this way of coming to recognize Freud's pow

ers,

such

an

approach

to Richards's

powers

as

a

reader

of

poetry

seems

to

me

just

right.

Practical

Criticism

provides

a

good

showcase of such

abilities

as

are

manifest

quite

early

in

Richards's

career.

In

a

brief

essay

that focuses

on

my

experience

of

Practical Criticism

and,

to

a

lesser

extent,

on

Principles,

much

has to

be left

out.

Those

omissions

involve

the

promethean

Richards

with

his

deep

concerns

and

hopes

for

worldwide

civilization;

the Richards

who also

had

high

hopes

for

a

universal

language

founded

on

Basic

English;

and

the

Richards

who

was an

educational

reformer,

one

who

rightly

saw

much

amiss in

both

our

secondary

and

higher

educational

systems.

Imust leave out of

my

account Richards the

mountaineer,

the nature

lover,

and

the

man

who

exulted

in

every

kind of

exploration.

It

also

does less

than

justice

to

the lover

of

poetry

who

practically

bubbled

over

with the

poems

he knew

by

heart?who

rejoiced

in

reciting

them

or

listening

to

others do

so,

and

who

in

his

later

years

wrote

some

very

creditable

poems

himself. This intense

love

of

poetry

was

the best

warrant

and vindication of

the

many

books that

he

wrote

to

help

us

read

poetry

as

it

should be read.

MEMORIES

OF

HARVARD'S

ENGLISH

DEPARTMENT 1920-1960

DOUGLAS BUSH

When

Robert

Benchley,

as

a

Harvard

undergraduate,

was

faced

on

an

examination

with

a

request

for

a

discussion

of

a

certain

fishing

treaty,

he

is

said

to

have

begun

"I

propose

to

consider this

question

from

the

point

of view of the fish."

Having

been invited to call

up

my

impressions

of Harvard

figures

of

a

bygone

time,

I

propose

to

approach

them

by

?

1981.

Douglas

Bush.

0037-3052/81/1015-0595/$00.88/0.

brooks cleanth richards and practical criticism

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