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Wagner, Baudelaire, Swinburne: Poetry in the Condition of Music

Wagner, Baudelaire, Swinburne: Poetry in the Condition of Music JEROME MCGANN I. Swinburne's Ideal of Harmony Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass1 Whitman made this remarkable challenge a keynote of his epochal book, and since then many--poets and scholars alike--have sought to demonstrate the truth of his bold claim. Swinburne, as we know, responded enthusiastically to the "majestic harmony" of Whitman's verse.2 Enthusiastically but not uncritically. "Whitmania," as he called it, drew Swinburne to lay out his 1872 critical analysis of the American's work. Whitman's free verse led the classicist Swinburne to his analysis of "the radical fault in the noble genius of Whitman," his "formalism": For truly no scholar and servant of the past, reared on academic tradition under the wing of old-world culture, was ever more closely bound in with his own theories, more rigidly regulated by his own formularies, than this poet of new life and limitless democracy. ("Under the Microscope," Hyder, p. 62) This is acute, as is the entire extended discussion of Whitman in "Under the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Victorian Poetry West Virginia University Press

Wagner, Baudelaire, Swinburne: Poetry in the Condition of Music

McGann, Jerome J.
Victorian Poetry , Volume 47 (4) – Jan 15, 2009
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West Virginia University Press
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Copyright © West Virginia University Press
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1530-7190
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Abstract

JEROME MCGANN I. Swinburne's Ideal of Harmony Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass1 Whitman made this remarkable challenge a keynote of his epochal book, and since then many--poets and scholars alike--have sought to demonstrate the truth of his bold claim. Swinburne, as we know, responded enthusiastically to the "majestic harmony" of Whitman's verse.2 Enthusiastically but not uncritically. "Whitmania," as he called it, drew Swinburne to lay out his 1872 critical analysis of the American's work. Whitman's free verse led the classicist Swinburne to his analysis of "the radical fault in the noble genius of Whitman," his "formalism": For truly no scholar and servant of the past, reared on academic tradition under the wing of old-world culture, was ever more closely bound in with his own theories, more rigidly regulated by his own formularies, than this poet of new life and limitless democracy. ("Under the Microscope," Hyder, p. 62) This is acute, as is the entire extended discussion of Whitman in "Under the

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Victorian Poetry – West Virginia University Press

Published: Jan 15, 2009

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