The HyperTexts

T. S. Eliot Reflects on Vers Libre

I find the essay below of interest because T. S. Eliot, one of the leading figures of the modern English free verse movement (if not the leading figure), took issue with the movement's attack on iambic pentameter, which would of course be an attack on Shakespeare, Milton and the English poetic tradition. Robert Frost suggested that all English poetry is either iambic or loose iambic, which in turn suggests that non-metrical English poetry is actually prose. Here, Eliot seems to agree, calling free verse a "preposterous fiction" when it calls for the abolition of meter. Eliot goes on to claim that this strange anti-meter poetry movement was a novelty met with neglect, which resulted in attacks supported by a faulty theory. He then points out that free verse, as it has come to be defined, can only be understood in negatives: absence of pattern (form), rhyme and meter. He closes by criticizing the two extremes of English poetry: over-regular meter, and the absence of meter. Eliot obviously does not favor either of these two extremes. What he proposes is a kind of "golden mean" in which poetry remains musical, but is not perfectly regular. This can be accomplished when poets take "liberties" with meter, which of course is what Eliot did in his own work, as did Shakespeare and Milton. Thus, Eliot did not see superior poetry as being "freed" from meter, but as being more "liberated" in its employment of meter.―Michael R. Burch, editor, The HyperTexts

Reflections on vers libre
by T. S. Eliot
March 3, 1917

Ceux qui possèdent leur vers libre y tiennent: on n’abandonne que le vers libre ― Duhamel et Vildrac

A lady, renowned in her small circle for the accuracy of her stop-press information of literature, complains to me of a growing pococurantism. “Since the Russians came in I can read nothing else. I have finished Dostoevski, and I do not know what to do.” I suggested that the great Russian was an admirer of Dickens, and that she also might find that author readable. “But Dickens is a sentimentalist; Dostoevski is a realist.” I reflected on the amours of Sonia and Ras ― kolnikov, but forbore to press the point, and I proposed It Is Never Too Late To Mend. “But one cannot read the Victorians at all!” While I was extracting the virtues of the proposition that Dostoevski is a Christian, while Charles Reade is merely pious, she added that she could no longer read any verse but vers libre.

It is assumed that vers libre exists. It is assumed that vers libre is a school; that it consists of certain theories; that its group or groups of theorists will either revolutionise or demoralise poetry if their attack upon the iambic pentameter meets with any success. Vers libre does not exist, and it is time that this preposterous fiction followed the élan vital and the 80,000 Russians into oblivion.

When a theory of art passes it is usually found that a groat’s worth of art has been bought with a million of advertisement. The theory which sold the wares may be quite false, or it may be confused and incapable of elucidation, or it may never have existed. A mythical revolution will have taken place and produced a few works of art which perhaps would be even better if still less of the revolutionary theories clung to them. In modern society such revolutions are almost inevitable. An artist happens upon a method, perhaps quite unreflectingly, which is new in the sense that it is essentially different from that of the secondrate people about him, and different in everything but essentials from that of any of his great predecessors. The novelty meets with neglect; neglect provokes attack; and attack demands a theory. In an ideal state of society one might imagine the good New growing naturally out of the good Old, without the need for polemic and theory; this would be a society with a living tradition. In a sluggish society, as actual societies are, tradition is ever lapsing into superstition, and the violent stimulus of novelty is required. This is bad for the artist and his school, who may become circumscribed by their theory and narrowed by their polemic; but the artist can always console himself for his errors in his old age by considering that if he had not fought nothing would have been accomplished.

Vers libre has not even the excuse of a polemic; it is a battle-cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art. And as the so called vers libre which is good is anything but “free”, it can better be defended under some other label. Particular types of vers libre may be supported on the choice of content, or on the method of handling the content. I am aware that many writers of vers libre have introduced such innovations, and that the novelty of their choice and manipulation of material is confused—if not in their own minds, in the minds of many of their readers—with the novelty of the form. But I am not here concerned with imagism, which is a theory about the use of material; I am only concerned with the theory of the verse-form in which imagism is cast. If vers libre is a genuine verse-form it will have a positive definition. And I can define it only in negatives: (1) absence of pattern, (2) absence of rhyme, (3) absence of metre.

The third of these qualities is easily disposed of. What sort of a line that would be which would not scan at all I cannot say. Even in the popular American magazines, whose verse columns are now largely given over to vers libre, the lines are usually explicable in terms of prosody. Any line can be divided into feet and accents. The simpler metres are a repetition of one combination, perhaps a long and a short, or a short and a long syllable, five times repeated. There is, however, no reason why, within the single line, there should be any repetition; why there should not be lines (as there are) divisible only into feet of different types. How can the grammatical exercise of scansion make a line of this sort more intelligible? Only by isolating elements which occur in other lines, and the sole purpose of doing this is the production of a similar effect elsewhere. But repetition of effect is a question of pattern.

Scansion tells us very little. It is probable that there is not much to be gained by an elaborate system of prosody, by the erudite complexities of Swinburnian metre. With Swinburne, once the trick is perceived, the effect is diminished. When the unexpectedness wears off, one ceases to look for what one does not find in Swinburne; the inexplicable line with the music which can never be recaptured in other words. Swinburne mastered his technique, which is a great deal, but he did not master it to the extent of being able to take liberties with it, which is everything. If anything promising for English poetry is hidden in the metres of Swinburne, it lies far beyond the point to which Swinburne has developed them.

The most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language has been done either by taking a very simple form, like the iambic pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly approximating to a very simple one. It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse.

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