Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot

by Frank Kermode

  literature. It is from the second point of view that my objections

  to Milton are made : it is from this point of view that we can go so

  far as to say that, although his work realizes superbly one important

  element in poetry, he may still be considered as having done damage to the English language from which it has not wholly recovered.

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  . . .

  The reproach against Milton, that his technical influence has

  been bad, appears to have been made by no one more positively

  than by myself. I find myself saying, as recently as 1936, that this

  charge against Milton

  appears a good deal more serious if we affirm that Milton's poetry

  could only be an influence for the worse, upon any poet whatever. It

  is more serious, also, if we affirm that Milton's bad influence may be

  traced much farther than the eighteenth century, and much farther

  than upon bad poets : if we say that it was an influence against which

  we still have to struggle.

  In writing these sentences I failed to draw a threefold distinction, which now seems to me of some importance. There are three separate assertions implied. The first is, that an influence has been

  bad in the past : this is to assert that good poets, in the eighteenth

  or nineteenth century, would have written better if they had not

  submitted themselves to the influence of Milton. The second assertion is, that the contemporary situation is such that Milton is a master whom we should avoid. The third is, that the influence of

  Milton, or of any particular poet, can be always bad, and that we

  can predict that wherever it is found at any time in the future,

  however remote, it will be a bad influence. Now, the first and third

  of these assertions I am no longer prepared to make, because,

  detac�ed from the second, they do not appear to me to have any

  meamng.

  For the first, when we consider one great poet of the past, and

  one or more other poets, upon whom we say he has exerted a bad

  influence, we must admit that the responsibility, if there be any,

  is rather with the poets who were influenced than with the poet

  whose work exerted the influence. We can, of course, show that

  certain tricks or mannerisms which the imitators display are due

  to conscious or unconscious imitation and emulation, but that is

  a reproach against their injudicious choice of a model and not

  against their model itself. And we can never prove that any

  particular poet would have written better poetry if he had escaped

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  that influence. Even i f w e ass�rt, what can only b e a matter of

  faith, that Keats would have written a very great epic poem if

  Milton had not preceded him, is· it sensible to pine for an unwritten masterpiece, in exchange for one which we possess and acknowledge ? And as for the remote future, what can we affirm

  about the poetry that will be written then, except that we should

  probably be unable to understand or to enjoy it, and that therefore we can hold no opinion as to what 'good' and 'bad' influences will mean in that future ? The only relation in which the question

  of influence, good and bad, is significant, is the relation to the

  immediate future. With that question I shall engage at the end. I

  wish first to mention another reproach against Milton, that represented by the phrase 'dissociation of sensibility'.

  I remarked many years ago, in an essay on Dryden, that :

  In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from

  which we have never recovered ; and this dissociation, as is natural, was

  due to the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century,

  Milton and Dryden.

  The longer passage from which this sentence is taken is quoted

  by Dr. Tillyard in his Milton. Dr. Tillyard makes the following

  comment :

  Speaking only of what in this passage concerns Milton, I would say

  that there is here a mixture of truth and falsehood. Some sort of

  dissociation of sensibility in Milton, not necessarily undesirable, has to

  be admitted ; but that he was responsible for any such dissociation in

  others (at least till this general dissociation had inevitably set in) is

  untrue.

  I believe that the general affirmation represented by the phrase

  'dissociation of sensibility' (one of the two or three phrases of my

  coinage - like 'objective correlative' - which have had a success

  in the world astonishing to their author) retains some validity ;

  but I now incline to agree with Dr. Tillyard that to lay the burden

  on the shoulders of Milton and Dryden was a mistake. If such a

  dissociation did take place, I suspect that the causes are too complex and too profound to justify our accounting for the change in terms of literary criticism. All we can say is, that something like

  this did happen ; that it had something to do with the Civil War ;

  that it would even be unwise to say it was caused by the Civil War,

  but that it is a consequence of the same causes which brought

  about the Civil War ; that we must seek the causes in Europe, not

  in England alone ; and for what these causes were, we may dig and

  dig until we get to a depth at which words and concepts fail us.

  Before proceeding to take up the case against Milton, as it

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  stood for poets twenty-five years ago - the second, and only

  significant meaning of 'bad influence' - I think it would be best

  to consider what permanent strictures of reproof may be drawn :

  those censures which, when we make them, we must assume to be

  made by enduring laws of taste. The essence of the permanent

  censure of Milton is, I believe, to be found in Johnson's essay.

  This is not the place in which to examine certain particular and

  erroneous judgments of Johnson ; to explain his condemnation of

  Comus and Samson as the application of dramatic canons which to

  us seem inapplicable ; or to condone his dismissal of the versification of Lycidas by the specialization, rather than the absence, of his sense of rhythm. Johnson's most important censure of Milton

  is contained in three paragraphs, which I must ask leave to quote

  in full.

  Throughout all his greater works [says Johnson] there prevails an

  uniform peculiarity of diction, a mode and cast of expression which

  bears little resemblance to that of any former writer ; and which is so

  far removed from common use, that an unlearned reader, when he first

  opens the book, finds himself surprised by a new language.

  This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong with

  Milton, imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suited to the

  grandeur of his ideas. Our latzguage, says Addison, sunk under him. But

  the truth is, that both in prose and in verse, he had formed his style by

  a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English

  words with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and

  condemned ; for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the

  beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts ; but such is the power

  of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without resis
tance, the reader feels

  himself in captivity to a higher and nobler mind, and criticism sinks in

  admiration.

  Milton's style was not modified by his subject ; what is shown with

  greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of

  his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets ; the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian ; perhaps sometimes combined with other tongues. Of him at last, may be said what Jonson

  said of Spenser, that he TPT'ote no language, but has formed what Butler

  called a Babylonish dialect, in itself harsh and barbarous, but m::de by

  exalted genius and extensive learning the vehicle of so much instruction

  and so much pleasure, that, like other lovers, we find grace in its

  deformity.

  This criticism seems to me substantially true : indeed, unless we

  accept it, I do not think we are in the way to appreciate the peculiar

  greatness of Milton. His style is not a classic style, in that it is not

  the elevation of a common style, by the final touch of genius, to

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  greatness. It is, from the foundation, and in every particular, a

  personal style, not based upon common speech, or common prose,

  or direct communication of meaning. Of some great poetry one

  has difficulty in pronouncing just what it is, what infinitesimal

  touch, that has made all the difference from a plain statement

  which anyone could make ; the slight transformation which, while

  it leaves a plain statement a plain statement, has always the

  maximal, never the minimal, alteration of ordinary language.

  Every distortion of construction, the foreign idiom, the use of a

  word in a foreign way or with the meaning of the foreign word

  from which it is derived rather than the accepted meaning in

  English, every idiosyncrasy is a particular act of violence which

  Milton has been the first to commit. There is no cliche, no poetic

  diction in the derogatory sense, but a perpetual sequence of

  original acts of lawlessness. Of all modern writers of verse, the

  nearest analogy seems to me to be Mallarme, a much smaller poet,

  though still a great one. The personalities, the poetic theories of

  the two men could not have been more different ; but in respect of

  the violence which they could do to language, and justify, there is

  a remote similarity. Milton's poetry is poetry at the farthest

  possible remove from prose ; his prose seems to me too near to

  half-formed poetry to be a good prose.

  To say that the work of a poet is at the farthest possible remove

  from prose would once have struck me as condemnatory : it now

  seems to me simply, when we have to do with a Milton, the precision of its peculiar greatness. As a poet, Milton seems to me probably the greatest of all eccentrics. His work illustrates no

  general principles of good writing ; the only principles of writing

  that it illustrates are such as are valid only for Milton himself to

  observe. There are two kinds of poet who can ordinarily be of use

  to other poets. There are those who suggest, to one or another of

  their successors, something which they have not done themselves,

  or who provoke a different way of doing the same thing : these are

  likely to be not the greatest, but smaller, imperfect poets with

  whom later poets discover an affinity. And there are the great

  poets from whom we can learn negative rules : no poet can teach

  another to write well, but some great poets can teach others some

  of the things to avoid. They teach us what to avoid, by showing us

  what great poetry can do without - how bare it can be. Of these

  are Dante and Racine. But if we are ever to make use of Milton

  we must do so in quite a different way. Even a small poet can

  learn something from the study of Dante, or from the study of

  Chaucer : we must perhaps wait for a great poet before we find

  one who can profit from the study of Milton.

  I repeat that the remoteness of Milton's verse from ordinary

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  speech, his invention o f his own poetic language, seems to me one

  of the marks of his greatness. Other marks are his sense of structure, both in the general design of Paradise Lost and Samson, and in his syntax ; and finally, and not least, his inerrancy, conscious

  or unconscious, in writing so as to make the best display of his

  talents, and the best concealment of his weaknesses.

  The appropriateness of the subject of Samson is too obvious to

  expatiate upon : it was probably the one dramatic story out of

  which Milton could have made a masterpiece. But the complete

  suitability of Paradise Lost has not, I think, been so often remarked. It was surely an intuitive perception of what he could not do, that arrested Milton's project of an epic on King Arthur. For

  one thing, he had little interest in, or understanding of, individual

  human beings. In Paradise Lost he was not called upon for any of

  that understanding which comes from an affectionate observation

  of men and women. But such an interest in human beings was not

  required - indeed its absence was a necessary condition - for the

  creation of his figures of Adam and Eve. These are not a man and

  woman such as any we know : if they were, they would not be

  Adam and Eve. They are the original Man and Woman, not types,

  but prototypes. They have the general characteristics of men and

  women, such that we can recognize, in the temptation and the fall,

  the first motions of the faults and virtues, the abjection and the

  nobility, of all their descendants. They have ordinary humanity

  to the right degree, and yet are not, and should not be, ordinary

  mortals. Were they more particularized they would be false, and

  if Milton had been more interested in humanity, he could not

  have created them. Other critics have remarked upon the exactness, without defect or exaggeration, with which Moloch, Belial, and Mammon, in the second book, speak according to the particular sin which each represents. It would not be suitable that the infernal powers should have, in the human sense, characters,

  for a character is always mixed ; but in the hands of an inferior

  manipulator, they might easily have been reduced to humours.

  The appropriateness of the material of Paradise Lost to the

  genius and the limitations of Milton, is still more evident when we

  consider the visual imagery. I have already remarked, in a paper

  written some years ago, on Milton's weakness of visual observation, a weakness which I think was always present - the effect of his blindness may have been rather to strengthen the compensatory qualities than to increase a fault which was already present.

  Mr. Wilson Knight, who has devoted close study to recurrent

  imagery in poetry, has called attention to Milton's propensity

  towards images of engineering and mechanics ; to me it seems that

  Milton is at his best in imagery suggestive of vast size, limitless

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  space, abysmal depth, and li�t and darkness. No theme and no

  setting, other than that which he chose in Paradis
e Lost, could

  have given him such scope for t}le kind of imagery in which he

  excelled, or made less demand ·upon those powers of visual imagination which were in him defective.

  Most of the absurdities and inconsistencies to which Johnson

  calls attention, and which, so far as they can justly be isolated in

  this way, he properly condemns, will I think appear in a more

  correct proportion if we consider them in relation to this general

  judgment. I do not think that we should attempt to see very clearly

  any scene that Milton depicts : it should be accepted as a shifting

  phantasmagory. To complain, because we first find the arch-fiend

  'chain'd on the burning lake', and in a minute or two see him

  making his way to the shore, is to expect a kind of consistency

  which the world to which Milton has introduced us does not

  reqmre.

  This limitation of visual power, like Milton's limited interest in

  human beings, turns out to be not merely a negligible defect, but

  a positive virtue, when we visit Adam and Eve in Eden. Just as a

  higher degree of characterization of Adam and Eve would have

  been unsuitable, so a more vivid picture of the earthly Paradise

  would have been less paradisiacal. For a greater definiteness, a

  more detailed account of flora and fauna, could only have assimilated Eden to the landscapes of earth with which we are familiar.

  As it is, the impression of Eden which we retain, is the most suitable, and is that which Milton was most qualified to give : the impression of light a daylight and a starlight, a light of dawn

  -

  and of dusk, the light which, remembered by a man in his blindn��s, has a supernatural glory unexperienced by men of normal VISIOn.

  We must, then, in reading Paradise Lost, not expect to see

  clearly ; our sense of sight must be blurred, so that our hearing

  may become more acute. Paradise Lost, like Finnegans Wake (for

  I can think of no work which provides a more interesting parallel :

  two books by great blind musicians, each writing a language of

  his own based upon English) makes this peculiar demand for a

  readjustment of the reader's mode of apprehension. The emphasis

  is on the sound, not the vision, upon the word, not the idea ; and

  in the end it is the unique versification that is the most certain