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DESCRIPTIVE POETRY
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DESCRIPTIVE See also:POETRY , the name given to a class of literature, which may be defined as belonging mainly to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in See also:Europe. From the earliest times, all poetry which was not subjectively lyrical was See also:apt to indulge in See also:ornament which might be named descriptive. But the critics of the 17th See also:century formed a distinction between the representations of the ancients and those of the moderns. We find Boileau emphasizing the statement that, while See also:Virgil paints, See also:Tasso describes. This may be a useful indication for us in defining not what should, but what in practice has been called descriptive poetry." It is poetry in which it is not imaginative See also:passion which prevails, but a didactic purpose, or even something of the See also:instinct of a sublimated auctioneer. In other words, the landscape, or See also:architecture. or still See also:life, or whatever may be the See also:object of the poet's See also:attention, is not used as an See also:accessory, but is itself the centre of See also:interest. It is, in this sense, not correct to See also:call poetry in which description is only the occasional ornament of a poem, and not its central subject, descriptive poetry. The landscape or still life must fill the See also:canvas, or, if human interest is introduced, that must be treated as an accessory. Thus, in the See also:Hero and Leander of See also:Marlowe and in the See also:Alastor of See also:Shelley, description of a very brilliant See also:kind is largely introduced, yet these are not examples of what is technically called " descriptive poetry," because it is not the strait between Sestos and See also:Abydos, and it is not the See also:flora of a tropical glen, which concentrates the attention of the one poet or of the other, but it is an example of See also:physical passion in the one See also:case and of intellectual passion in the other, which is diagnosed and dilated on. On the other See also:hand See also:Thomson's Seasons, in which landscape takes the central See also:place, and See also:Drayton's Polyolbion, where everything is sacrificed to a topographical progress through See also:Britain, are strictly descriptive. It will he obvious from this See also:definition that the danger ahead of all purely descriptive poetry is that it will lack intensity, that it will he frigid, if not dead. Description for description's See also:sake, especially in studied See also:verse, is rarely a vitalized See also:form of literature. It is threatened, from its very conception, with languor and coldness; it must exercise an extreme See also:art or be condemned to immediate sterility. Boileau, with his customary intelligence, was the first to see this, and he thought that the danger might be avoided by care in technical See also:execution. His See also:advice to the poets of his See also:time was:
" Soyez riches et pompeux dans vos descriptions ; C'est-la qu'il faut See also:des vers etaler 1'elegance,"
and:
" De figure sans nombre egayez votre ouvrage ;
Que toute y false aux yeux une riante See also:image,"
and in verses of brilliant See also:humour he mocked the writer who, too full of his subject, and describing for description's sake, will never quit his theme until he has exhausted it:
" Fuyez de See also:ces auteurs 1'abondance sterile
Et ne See also:vous chargez point d'un detail inutile."
This is excellent advice, but Boileau's humorous sallies do not quite meet the question whether such purely descriptive poetry as he criticizes is legitimate at all.
In See also:England had appeared the famous See also:translation (1592–1611), by Josuah See also:Sylvester, of the Divine See also:Weeks and See also:Works of Du Bartas, containing such lines as those which the juvenile See also:Dryden admired so much:
" But when See also:winter's keener breath began To crystallize the Baltic ocean,
To glaze the lakes, and bridle up the floods, And perriwig with See also:wool the bald-pate See also:woods."
There was also the curious physiological epic of Phineas See also:Fletcher, The See also:Purple See also:Island (1633). But on the whole it was not until See also:French influences had made themselves See also:felt on See also:English poetry,
that description, as Boileau conceived it, was cultivated as a distinct art. The See also: They were infected with the faults which accompany a.n artificial See also:style; they were monotonous, rhetorical and symmetrical, while the uniformity of treatment which was inevitable to their See also:plan rendered them hopelessly tedious, if they were prolonged to any See also:great extent.
This See also:species of See also:writing had been cultivated to a considerable degree through the preceding century, in See also:Italy and (as the remarks of Boileau testify) in See also:France, but it was in England that it reached its highest importance. The classic of descriptive poetry, in fact, the specimen which the literature of the See also:world presents which must be considered as the most important and the most successful, is The Seasons (1726–1730) of See also: Four several See also:translations of The Seasons into French contended for the suffrages of the public, and J. F. de See also:Saint-See also:Lambert (1716–1803) imitated Thomson in See also:Les Saisons (1769), a poem which enjoyed popularity for See also:half a century, and of which See also:Voltaire said that it was the only one of its generationwhich would reach posterity. Nevertheless, as Madame du See also:Deffand told See also:Walpole, Saint-Lambert is " froid, fade et faux," and the same may be said of J. A. See also:Roucher (1745–1794), who wrote Les Mois in 1779, a descriptive poem famous in its See also:day. The See also:Abbe Jacques See also:Delille (1738–1813), perhaps the most ambitious descriptive poet who has ever lived, was treated as a Virgil by his contemporaries; he published Les Gtorgiques in 1769, Les Jardins in 1782, and L'Homme des champs in 1803, but he went furthest in his brilliant, though artificial, Trois regnes de la nature (1809), which French critics have called the masterpiece of this whole school of descriptive poetry. Delille, however, like Thomson before him, was unable to avoid monotony and want of coherency. Picture follows picture, and no progress is made. The See also:satire of See also:Marie See also:Joseph See also:Chenier, in his famous and witty Discours sur les poames descriptifs, brought the See also:vogue of this species of poetry to an end. In England, again, See also:Wordsworth, who treated the See also:genius of Thomson with unmerited severity, revived descriptive poetry in a form which owed more than Wordsworth realized to the See also:model of The Seasons. In The Excursion and The Prelude, as well as in many of his See also:minor pieces, Wordsworth's philosophical and moral intentions cannot prevent us from perceiving the large part which pure description takes; and the same may be said of much of the See also:early blank verse of S. T. Coleridge. Since their day, however, purely descriptive poetry has gone more and more completely out of See also:fashion, and its place has been taken by the richer and directer effects of such See also:prose as that of See also:Ruskin in English, or of See also:Fromentin and See also:Pierre See also:Loti in French. It is almost impossible in descriptive verse to obtain those vivid and impassioned appeals to the imagination which are of the very essence of genuine poetry, and it is unlikely that descriptive poetry, as such, will again take a prominent place in living literature. (E. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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