dr mohit k ray

oparative Study of the Indian Poetics and the Western Poetics . New Delhi : Sarup & Sons, 2008.

Foreword

Speculations about the nature of poetry are as old as Aristotle. In Poetry Direct and Oblique Tillyard begins his discourse by admitting that the “terms ‘direct' and ‘oblique' are false contrast. All poetry is more or less oblique; there is no direct poetry”. The distinction is based mainly on emphasis, and is more a mater of convenience than conviction. It is also not true that direct poetry belongs to the primitive stage; in fact, it can come out of the deep part of a poet's nature. However, the distinction between direct poetry and oblique poetry is not something really very new; only it has been formulated with some systematic analysis in recent times. In Western criticism when Aristotle prefers probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities he is actually pleading for a kind of obliquity. In spite of Wordsworth's vociferous claim of bringing language close to speech his poetry clearly shows his departure from his theory.. If the poet's feeling is to be individuated he has to devise a kind of obliquity which will properly and adequately express his individual feelings. The poetry of Eliot and Pound abound in such deviations. For the New Critics the language of poetry, according to Brooks, is the language of paradox. Both irony and paradox make poetry oblique Allen Tate's idea of tension also contributes to obliquity.

. Tillyard says that it would seem at first sight ridiculous to treat the topic of obliquity because it is very difficult to define the sphere of obliquity in poetry. Is it really possible to create poetry of any sort without some kind of oblique expression, he asks. Tillyard first tries to give an idea of the sphere of obliquity and then discusses the means of obliquity. He believes that sensibility is the main material that leads to obliquity in poetry. The Romantic poets described things, by and large, without much obliquity, but their simplicity was deceptive and had pernicious influence on many who came to believe that any straightforward statement is poetry. Poems of pure sensibility we hardly come across before the Elizabethan age.. Tennyson is often praised for the “marvellous accuracy” of his nature descriptions. But a close look at Tennyson's poems reveals that there are many poems where the descriptions do not show any scientific accuracy but “an altogether more complicated phenomenon”. Tillyard quotes a passage from Pope's The Rape of the Lock to demonstrate how sometime a ‘brutal directness' tends to obscure the obliquity of expression. He concludes that sensibility is often the subject of oblique expression, and it is often present when we are least aware of its presence.

Tillyard then focuses on some of the great commonplaces that lie in the sphere of obliquity One such commonplace is the talk about passions. Consequent upon Aristotle's definition of tragedy as the imitation of action that brings up pity and fear most critics have taken imitation as the end that rouses passions. Dryden in Essay of Dramatic Poesy defines in the persona of Lisideius a play as ‘a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours…'. It is thus assumed that the passions are the important stuff of poetry or drama for that matter. Arnold also lays great emphasis on passions: “Poetical works belong to the domain of our permanent passions” When exhibition of passions was regarded as the great aim of poetry the major forms of poetry tried to present things in direct statement. The poets tried to say things about great human passions and that was the end of it. And one did not care to ask whether these passions were figures of some larger patterns. “Aurora Leigh” gives us “a just and lively image of human nature” , and that is the end of it. But what about Paradise Lost ? Does it not reach out to some patterns larger than what are presented in the poem? Similarly there is a difference between Congreve's The Way of the World and Browning's Men and Women . Whenever a poet tries to suggest something beyond the delineations of passions or human actions, the poem is bound to attain obliquity. To put it differently, obliquity becomes indispensable in poems which are meant to illuminate life in a profound sense. To show how in great poetry the higher pattern is suggested Tillyard refers to the last book of The Iliad where Prium visits Achilles to beg from him the body of his son, Hector. Achilles and Hector are sworn enemies. Yet in bereavement they have a feeling of kinship. Tillyard also makes a detailed critical discussion of The Fairy Queen to show how the obliquity of the poem that really accounts for its greatness as a poem has been missed by most critics on account of its fine versification and the structure of its allegory.

The third item that Tillyard encounters in the sphere of obliquity is the primitive. One of the primitive elements is fear. Even many of the ballads that narrate fearful incidents and draw on man's unconscious desire to be vicariously frightened, use oblique expressions. Two other primitive feelings are those of joy and sorrow., and when joy is accompanied by sorrow we have entered the sphere of obliquity. The true joy-melancholy means full acceptance of the situation that calls for obliquity in poetic expression. When Keats says about Melancholy that Melancholy “dwells in Beauty – Beauty that must die” his poetry becomes oblique as it makes us ponder the truth of the statement.

In the second section of the third chapter Tillyard lists some of the means of obliquity : Rhythm, Symbolism, Allusion, Structure etc.

Rhythm becomes oblique when it more than supports the professed sense. In that case it can overwhelm the sense or it can suggest something entirely alien or irrelevant.. Tillyard also shows how in “Hymn to Pan” Shelley attains obliquity by exploiting a shift in rhythm. Symbolism or, more precisely, the use of symbolism also makes a poem oblique. The moment the west wind or the skylark is used as a symbol the poems become oblique. However, it was the French symbolists who espoused vigorously the obliquity in poetry by celebrating vagueness or obliquity as the soul of poetry.. The poet, according to Valery, is a maker of deviations who often forces the language to make the common word take different form and say different things . This is done mainly through the use of symbols, or using a word symbolically. In Germany all the German Romantics espoused obliquity in different degrees and in different ways.. In English poetry the simple symbols of the Romantics gradually gave way to the highly complex and rich symbols in the poetry of Yeats and Eliot.

Allusions, conscious or unconscious, also contribute to the obliquity of a poem. The use of allusions thickens the meaning of certain details. It makes a text inter-textual. The obliquity in Eliot's poetry is largely due to the profuse allusions that he uses.

Tillyard argues that even plot can cause obliquity. This happens because the plot signifies order and control, and Tillyard says, ‘it is the chief means of giving the impression of what we loosely call greatness' . Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress” is a poem that illustrates plot-obliquity. “Lycidus”, also, according to Tillyard is a typical example of plot- obliquity. .Tillyard also refers to Chaucer's “The Miller's Tale” and analyses it to show how the nature of the coarse plot leads to obliquity of the poem.

Not only plot ; even a particular character can compel the poet to have recourse to obliquity. Tillyard cites the example of Hamlet, and shows how , compared with Orestes, Hamlet is much profounder, and the expression of this profundity has made the poetry of Hamlet often oblique.

Towards the end of the book Tillyard makes a brief critical survey of the changing relationship between direct and oblique poetry in some periods of history.

Incidentally, the idea of direct poetry or statement poetry can be found in Sanskrit poetics where it is described as Svabhavokti (natural utterance). The first references to Svabhavokti are found in the writings of Bana Later Bhatti, Dandin, Mahimabhatta and others discuss different aspects of it in detail. In Sanskrit poetics the idea of oblique poetry or V akrokti can be traced back to the critical speculations of Bhamaha who is followed with divergence of conception and treatment by Dandin, Vamana, Rudrata, Kuntaka, Abhivagupta and Bhoja among others. Vakrokti , for Bhamaha, is an essential element of poetry. It is something that underlies all figures of speech and imparts beauty on them However, it was Kuntaka who discussed Vakrokti at a great length, elaborated the concept and developed a unique theory of literary criticism out of it. He looks upon Vakrokti as the life-breath of poetry and describes it as a striking mode of expression depending on the peculiar turn given to it by the skill of the poet. According to Kuntaka the language of poetry is different not only from the current mode of speech but also from the language of science, a point that Coleridge would also make in Biographia Literaria .

Anybody interested in poetry in general or Tillyard's observations on poetry in particular will find this slim volume extremely useful and interesting.

Mohit K. Ray