Can Grande’s Castle: Preface (1918)
The four poems in this book are more closely related to one another than may at first appear. They all owe their existence to the war, for I suppose that, had there been no war, I should never have thought of them. They are scarcely war poems, in the strict sense of the word, nor are they allegories in which the present is made to masquerade as the past. Rather, they are the result of a vision thrown suddenly back upon remote events to explain a strange and terrible reality. “Explain” is hardly the word, for to explain the subtle causes which force men, once in so often, to attempt to break the civilization they have been at pains to rear, and so oblige other, saner, men to oppose them, is scarcely the province of poetry. Poetry works more deviously, but perhaps not less conclusively.
It has frequently been asserted that an artist lives apart, that he must withdraw himself from events and be somehow above and beyond them. To a certain degree this is true, as withdrawal is usually an inherent quality of his nature, but to seek such a withdrawal is both ridiculous and frustrating. For an artist to shut himself up in the proverbial “ivory tower” and never look out of the window is merely a tacit admission that it is his ancestors, not he, who possess the faculty of creation. This is the real decadence: to see through the eyes of dead men. Yet to-day can never be adequately expressed, largely because we are a part of it and only a part. For that reason one is flung backwards to a time which is not thrown out of proportion by any personal experience, and which on that very account lies extended in something like its proper perspective.
Circumstances beget an interest in like circumstances, and a poet, suddenly finding himself in the midst of war, turns naturally to the experiences of other men in other wars. He discovers something which has always hitherto struck him as preposterous, that life goes on in spite of war. That war itself is an expression of life, a barbaric expression on one side calling for an heroic expression on the other. It is as if a door in his brain crashed open and he looked into a distance of which he had heard but never before seen. History has become life, and he stands aghast and exhilarated before it.
That is why I have chosen Mr. Aldington’s poem as a motto to this book. For it is obvious that I cannot have experienced what I have here written. I must have got it from books. But, living now, in the midst of events greater than these, the books have become reality to me in a way that they never could have become before, and the stories I have dug out of dusty volumes seem as actual as my own existence. I hope that a little of this vividness may have got into the poems themselves, and so may reach my readers. Perhaps it has been an impossible task, I can only say that I was compelled to attempt it.
The poems are written in “polyphonic prose,” a form which has proved a stumbling-block to many people. “Polyphonic prose” is perhaps a misleading title, as it tends to make the layman think that this is a prose form. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The word “prose” in its title simply refers to the manner in which the words are printed; “polyphonic”—many-voiced—giving the real key. “Polyphonic prose” is the freest, the most elastic, of all forms, for it follows at will any, and all, of the rules which guide other forms. Metrical verse has one set of laws, cadenced verse another; “polyphonic prose” can go from one to the other in the same poem with no sense of incongruity. Its only touchstone is the taste and feeling of its author.
Yet, like all other artistic forms, it has certain fundamental principles, and the chief of these is an insistence on the absolute adequacy of the manner of a passage to the thought it embodies. Taste is therefore its determining factor; taste and a rhythmic ear.
In the preface to “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” I stated that I had found the idea of the form in the works of the French poet, M. Paul Fort. But in adapting it for use in English I was obliged to make so many changes that it may now be considered as practically a new form. The greatest of these changes was in the matter of rhythm. M. Fort’s practice consists, almost entirely, of regular verse passages interspersed with regular prose passages. But a hint in one of his poems led me to believe that a closer blending of the two types was desirable, and here at the very outset I met with a difficulty. Every form of art must have a base; to depart satisfactorily from a rhythm it is first necessary to have it. M. Fort found this basic rhythm in the alexandrine. But the rhythm of the alexandrine is not one of the basic rhythms to an English ear. Altered from syllables to accent, it becomes light, even frivolous, in texture. There appeared to be only one basic rhythm for English serious verse: iambic pentameter, which, either rhymed as in the “heroic couplet” or unrhymed as in “blank verse,” seems the chief foundation of English metre. It is so heavy and so marked, however, that it is a difficult rhythm to depart from and go back to; therefore I at once discarded it for my purpose.
Putting aside one rhythm of English prosody after another, I finally decided to base my form upon the long, flowing cadence of oratorical prose. The variations permitted to this cadence enable the poet to change the more readily into those of vers libre, or even to take the regular beat of metre, should such a marked time seem advisable. It is, of course, important that such changes should appear as not only adequate but necessary when the poem is read aloud. And so I have found it. However puzzled a reader may be in trying to apprehend with the eye a prose which is certainly not prose, I have never noticed that an audience experiences the slightest confusion in hearing a “polyphonic prose” poem read aloud. I admit that the typographical arrangement of this form is far from perfect, but I have not as yet been able to hit upon a better. As all printing is a mere matter of convention, however, I hope that people will soon learn to read it with no more difficulty than a musician knows in reading a musical score.
So much for the vexed question of rhythm. Others of the many voices of “polyphonic prose” are rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and return. Rhyme is employed to give a richness of effect, to heighten the musical feeling of a passage, but it is employed in a different way from that usual in metrical verse. For, although the poet may, indeed must, employ rhyme, it is not done always, nor, for the most part, regularly. In other words, the rhymes should seldom come at the ends of the cadences, unless such an effect be especially desired. This use of rhyme has been another difficulty to readers. Seeing rhymes, their minds have been compelled by their seeming strangeness to pull them, Jack-Horner-like, out of the text and unduly notice them, to the detriment of the passage in which they are embedded. Hearing them read without stress, they pass unobserved, merely adding their quota of tonal colour to the whole.
Return in “polyphonic prose” is usually achieved by the recurrence of a dominant thought or image, coming in irregularly and in varying words, but still giving the spherical effect which I have frequently spoken of as imperative in all poetry.
It will be seen, therefore, that “polyphonic prose” is, in a sense, an orchestral form. Its tone is not merely single and melodic as is that of vers libre, for instance, but contrapuntal and various. I have analyzed it here with some care because, as all the poems in this volume are written in it, some knowledge of how to approach it is necessary if one is to understand them. I trust, however, that my readers will speedily forget matters of technique on turning to the poems themselves.
One thing more I wish to say in regard to “Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate Swings.” I should be exceedingly sorry if any part of this poem were misunderstood, and so construed into an expression of discourtesy toward Japan. No such idea entered my mind in writing it; in fact, the Japanese sections in the first part were intended to convey quite the opposite meaning. I wanted to place in juxtaposition the delicacy and artistic clarity of Japan and the artistic ignorance and gallant self-confidence of America. Of course, each country must be supposed to have the faults of its virtues; if, therefore, I have also opposed Oriental craft to Occidental bluff, I must beg indulgence.
I have tried to give a picture of two races at a moment when they were brought in contact for the first time. Which of them has gained most by this meeting, it would be difficult to say. The two episodes in the “Postlude” are facts, but they can hardly epitomize the whole truth. Still they are striking, occurring as they did in the same year. I owe the scene of the drowning of the young student in the Kegon waterfall to the paper “Young Japan,” by Seichi Naruse, which appeared in the “Seven Arts” for April, 1917. The inscription on the tree I have copied word for word from Mr. Naruse’s translation, and I wish here to express my thanks, not for his permission (as with a perfect disregard of morals, I never asked it), but for his beautiful rendering of the original Japanese. I trust that my appreciation will exonerate my theft.
AMY LOWELL.
BROOKLINE, MASS.
MAY 24, 1918.