Cosmic Aristocracy and Cosmic Democracy in Edith Sitwell

Abstract

One of the distinguishing marks of genuine poetic power is the ability to fuse into coherent order wide assortment of elements which, to the analytic temperament, would appear disparate and even mutally contradictory. Such synthetic intelligence is the hallmark especially of those poets who can be termed mythor, with equal appropriateness, cosmos-makers. The cosmos-makers are artists like Dante, Spenser, or Blake who feel the need to evolve in their poetry what Edith Sitwell has termed a philosophy of life as complete and rounded as any world could be.' To encompass such an end, the myth-making poet must have considerable architectonic ability. He must be able to construct matrix which will do some justice to the sheer range and complexity of human experience, while at the same time subsuming its infinite variety within an illuminating context and order. Cosmosbuilding poetry is accordingly characterized by the articulation of grammar of images and ideas which can be both elaborate and highly ingenious. That the cosmos-making tendency is prominent feature of modem English literature is attested by such literary creations as Joyce's Ulysses and Yeats' A Vision, and also by the popularity of encyclopedic and systematizing authors like Frazer, Campbell, and Jung. The myth-building proclivity of the early twentieth century can