On Donald Davie

Abstract

Of all first-rate poets of age, Donald Davie is most notably re actionary. If only with some strain, we might see him, advantage, as mining great ascetic vein of contemporary art, where classical thins away? as Rothko, Bresson, Sarraute, Beckett, Cage?in ever starker forms. And yet Davie stands far right of most of his fellow ascetics?indeed, within hail ing distance of eighteenth century. In tone, diction, and verse form, he often recalls late Augustan poets, of whom he has written well and whom he has also anthologised. Above all he has tried, like Augustans, be urbane: voice (in words he quotes from Matthew Arnold) the tone and of This is reactionary indeed. For of course there is no longer any center. Or center is but maelstrom, contention. In Purity of Diction English Verse (1952), Davie, comparing Landor unfavorably with Carew, observes that in latter speaks voice of Caroline culture, whereas Landor's verses nothing speaks but voice of poet himself. But of course it is just poet's voice, and only this, that we hear speaking Davie's poetry. It could not be otherwise. To make poetry out of moral commonplace, Davie notes, a poet has make it clear that he speaks not his own voice (that would be impertinent) but as spokesman of social tradition. This is not, I think, true, as Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and still others amply witness. But it does prompt us add that to make poetry out of moral commonplace, as Davie tries do, when commonplace itself seems damaged, indeed marooned?indeed, forlorn?does require something like impertinence; and rapping on roving knuckles with yardsticks borrowed from old classrooms, impertinently using word impertinence with its haughty assump tion of determinate absolutes, what Davie himself exemplifies, we may feel, is not the tone and spirit of any center, but something more courageous and signifi cant, not say lonely: individual man working out necessities of his conscience. Moreover, what really fires this conscience, we may feel, is not at all being at center, whatever that may happen be any age, but being right: right about need for civilized restraint, for faith idea of civilization itself. We hear Davie s poetry voice that will speak out spite of its knowl edge of indifference or incredulity that awaits it?a voice consciously coming, not from center of contemporary culture, but from out on edge, kind of nagging nostalgia for an austerer day, when men lived and died by Nonconformist lights, or for Reason, Loyalty, Restraint, Right. It is voice of conscience that?protestingly?finds itself left behind.