theoryofliteratu00inwell

126 Theory of Literature
paintings. Though it may be doubted whether the poet can really
suggest the effects of painting to hypothetical readers totally ig-
norant of painting, it is clear that, within our general cultural
tradition, writers did suggest the emblem, the landscape painting
of the eighteenth century, the impressionistic effects of a Whistler
and the like.
Whether poetry can achieve the effects of music seems more
doubtful, though it is a widely held view that it can. "Musical-
ity" in verse, closely analyzed, turns out to be something entirely
different from "melody" in music: it means an arrangement of
phonetic patterns, an avoidance of accumulations of consonants,
or simply the presence of certain rhythmical effects. With such
romantic poets as Tieck and, later, Verlaine, the attempts to
achieve musical effects are largely attempts to suppress the
meaning structure of verse, to avoid logical constructions, to
stress connotations rather than denotations. Yet blurred outlines,
vagueness of meaning, and illogicality are not, in a literal sense,
"musical" at all. Literary imitations of musical structures like
leitmotiv, the sonata or symphonic form seem to be more con-
crete ; but it is hard to see why repetitive motifs or a certain con-
trasting and balancing of moods, though by avowed intention
imitative of musical composition, are not essentially the familiar
literary devices of recurrence, contrast, and the like which are
common to all the arts. 9 In the comparatively rare instances
where poetry suggests definite musical sounds, Verlaine's "Les
sanglonts longs des violons" or Poe's "Bells," the effect of the
timbre of an instrument or the very generalized clang of bells is
achieved by means which are not much beyond ordinary onomat-
opoeia.
Poems have been, of course, written with the intention that
music should be added, e.g., many Elizabethan airs and all
librettos for opera. In rare instances, poets and composers have
been one and the same 5 but it seems hard to prove that the com-
position of music and words was ever a simultaneous process.
Even Wagner sometimes wrote his "dramas" years before they
were set to music ; and, no doubt, many lyrics were composed to
fit ready melodies. But the relation between music and really
great poetry seems rather tenuous when we think of the evidence
afforded by even the most successful settings into musical terms.