THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH IN POETRY

Abstract

As the dominatian af science in modern society becomes ever more, overwhelming, sO' our interest in the arts must became more urgent. We must naturally wonder whether they can do anything, however little, to check that 'loss of inwardness',! that spiritual impaverishment, which seems inseparable from an advanced stage of scientific and technological progress and which constitutes such a grave danger to' mankind. Surely it is not without significance, we may reflect, that in Brave New World the only spark af apposition was kindled .by the works of Shakespeare! In this situation, when art appears as almost the anly remaining rival of science, however inferior in power and. prestige to' its triumphant adversary, one would expect that the nature of the arts and their relatian to' science would be the object of the most eager and intensive. study.' Yet how little we still know about them! Even the most elementary questions remain unanswered, or can receive only a doubtful answer. Such is the question with which the present essay is concerned-the questian af truth in poetry. Has poetry got anything to do with truth, ar is truth the prerogative af science? Is poetry concerned with thought or anly with feeling? With fact or only with fictian? With statements or only with pseudo-statements? These questions are evidently very difficult ones or they would have been answered long ago. It would be too optimistic to' expect them to' be answered here and now. What is possible, and perhaps worth while, is tore-examine some of the answers that have already been offered and to consider how much they contribute towards the salution af aur problem. Literary criticism in the mid-twentieth century has generally tended to depreciate the importance af truth. and thought in poetry. 'Ideas in poetry are usually stale or false,' says George Boas, 'and no one older than sixteen would find it worth his while to read poetry merely for what it says.'2 The same view is taken in the very influential writings of I. A. Richards: 'It is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is.'3 'It is not the poet's business to' make true statements.'4 'Poetry ... is the supreme form of emotive language.'5 'We know', says Emil Staiger, 'that the essential thing about a verse-its unique valuedoes not consist in images, thoughts or ideas, but only in the