Smart’s Poetics in Jubilate Agno

Abstract

S M A R T ’ S P O E T I C S I N J U B I L A T E A G N O ALLAN J. GEDALOF University of Western Ontario “When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass) 1 It is universally acknowledged that every man is the lord of his own thoughts, “My mind to me a kingdom is,” says an old ballad; and in whatever state of servitude the body is, this empire is inseparable from the soul. From these considerations it will necessarily follow, that every man has, or ought to have, an arbitrary sway over the productions of his mind; and, seeing he directs her operations, he has an undoubted right to all her discoveries or conquests. (Christopher Smart)2 I O n l y twice in his writings, once in Jubilate Agno and once in the preface to his verse translation of Horace, did Christopher Smart describe what he saw as his special ability as a poet. For my talent is to give an impression upon words by punching, that when the reader casts his eye upon ’em, he takes up the image from the mould wch I have made.3 Impression then, is a talent or gift of Almighty God, by which a genius is empowered to throw an emphasis upon a word or sentence in such wise, that it cannot escape any reader of sheer good sense, and true critical sagacity.4 If the mere rarity of such self-evaluation did not make these two comments noteworthy, at least the repeated insistence on “impression” in these two statements, separated as they are by some nine years, indicates that they E n g lish Studies in C anada, v, 3, Autumn 1979 should have a special significance. Along with the influence of Bishops Berke­ ley and Lowth, these statements explain the basis of Smart’s poetics in Jubilato Agno. The “impression” image used in B'2:404 of Jubilate Agno is taken from type casting, where the matrix receives its impression from a punch and a letter is cast in the mould thus made. The image itself is appropriate to the son-in-law of John Newbery and to a writer as prolific as Smart, but the choice of specific words, I think, is even more significant. Smart is “punching” out an “impression,” which then forms a mould, a pattern for future images which the reader will take up. The process of composition, technical as its description is here, is not a pure act of intellect but the much more dynamic and impetuous “punching.” Like his mentor Berkeley, Smart is concerned with immediate impressions, with the impact of things on the senses of the reader, the Creator, and the poet who is the singer of the praises of creation. Smart does not, therefore, record a reasoned account of things but rather a subjective reaction to all that happens within and around him. This is in keeping with the teachings of Berkeley who argues that Ideas imprinted on the senses are real things, or do really exist . . . we deny they can subsist without the minds which perceive them . . . since the very being of a sensation or idea consists in being perceived, and an idea can be like nothing but an idea . . . The things perceived by sense may be termed external, with regard to their origin, in that they are not generated from within, by the mind itself, but imprinted by a spirit distinct from that which perceives them.5 Since these ideas are real things, they too can be perceived, and Smart can present them so that the reader can pick out his meaning by the emphasis he has put on a word or sentence. This leads us to the second half of the verse from Jubilate Agno, where the reader, casting his eye upon Smart’s words, “ takes...