Wimsatt in the passage immediately preceding. Yet he flatly contradicts Cleanth Brooks and W. Auden argues that the comic poet must "pad"-and, being a fine comic poet himself, he speaks with considerable authority. Again, while in serious poetry detectable padding of lines is fatal, the comic poet should appear openly and unashamedly to pad. In serious poetry thought, emotion, event must always appear to dictate the diction, metre, and rhyme in which they are embodied vice versa, in comic poetry it is the words, metre, rhyme which must appear to create the thoughts, emotions, events they require.
In the process of composition, as every poet knows, the relation between experience and language is always dialectical, but in the finished product it must always appear to the reader to be a one-way relationship.
In this respect poetry differs from practical messages, which are successful if and only if we correctly infer the intention. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and "bugs" from machinery. My endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Unless therefore we are advocates for that admiration which depends upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height, and, in order to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves. But Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men. But supposing that this were not the case, the Poet might then be allowed to use a peculiar language, when expressing his feelings for his own gratification, or that of men like himself. How, then, can his language differ in any material degree from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly? It might be proved that it is impossible. The Poet thinks and feels in the sprit of the passions of men. Page viii that uniformity of sentiment, which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising they had no regard to
Were not successful in representing or moving the affections. From this account of compositions it will be readily inferred that they 1 A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work in a dramatic, not in a narrative form with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Here are some statements by critics, both past and present: As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small-he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. One might call it metacriticism or even infracriticism, but I suspect actual instances will do more to explain this book than fashionable prefixes. This is not a book of literary criticism. Holland Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 6817614 Printed in the United States of America For my mothers and fathers Page iv Copyright &c.py 1968 by Norman N. HOLLAND New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1968 The Dynamics of Literary Response NORMAN N.
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