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E-book ‘Wit’s Wild Dancing Light’ : Reading the Poems of Alexander Pope

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Penilaian

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In her treatise on aesthetics, Feeling and Form, the twentieth-century philosopher Susanne K. Langer wrote that Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ conveys above all the joyous experience of having such a great idea as that which informs the poem—the ‘excitement of it’ (Langer 1963, p. 219). Wordsworth’s ‘Ode’ is not so much an explication of the idea itself as an expression of the powerful feelings engendered by encountering the idea. As a student, my initial feelings on reading Alexander Pope were like that: I felt the excitement of meeting a poet whose writing expressed sheer verbal vitality. Gradually, as I gained more experience of reading and re-reading him, I came to see that his diversity of both subject-matter and genres was held together by this essential power. The world in which he lived supplied the material out of which he shaped his poetry. No poet was more a part of that world; no poet was more dynamically able to generate from it such exhilaration. I slowly realized that whatever attitude elicited the poem (be it satirical, laudatory, forensic, adulatory) was transformed by the intensity of his intellectual and artistic accomplishment. For example, the deterioration of his friendship with Joseph Addison into something close to enmity—however justified or unjustified, however rightful or shameful—was transfigured by what he made of it through his utter command of the materials of poetic language into the portrait of Atticus in his Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735). That immense power was what I initially experienced, the excitement of verbal energy: what Pope defines in book 1 of The Dunciad (1728–29 and 1743) as ‘wit’s wild dancing light’. Chapter 26 will examine how this phrase’s ironic context further dramatizes its vibrant significance. For the moment, let us consider the phrase for itself. The adjective ‘wild’ is guided by its position between the two nouns ‘wit’ and ‘light’ towards its positive sense of natural creativity (as in ‘wild flowers’), rather than any tempestuous associations. ‘Wit’ carries, as it often did in eighteenth-century usage deriving from its Old English etymological root, the serious meaning of ‘knowledge’ or ‘intellect’, rather than superficial facetiousness. Like John Milton before him, Pope is ever conscious of language’s vulnerability to the shifting sands of time. Language reflects the human condition of living with partial, not absolute, knowledge. The phrase’s second adjective, ‘dancing’, brings in a feeling of movement as rendered by a present participle, and also an additional element of meaning. A couplet from Pope’s earlier An Essay on Criticism defines one quality of good poetry: ‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance’ (lines 362–63). Nature and art both manifest beauty; and both lie at the heart of Pope’s phrase, as definitions of the ‘light’ of knowledge. The phrase as an entity is held together by euphony of consonants (/w/,/d/, and /l/) and vowels (long and short /i/), and consists of parts set in an order which reflects and expresses its meaning: that enlightenment is achieved by a dynamic combination of natural and artistic vitality. The phrase is a compact cell, active within the body of the whole poem.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

821 HUT w

Penerbit

London : Open Book Publishers., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

314 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781800644137

Klasifikasi

821

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

English Poetry

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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