theoryofliteratu00inwell

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Theory of Literature
and persistence of the "symbol." An "image" may be invoked
once as a metaphor, but if it persistently recurs, both as presentation
and representation, it becomes a symbol, may even become
part of a symbolic (or mythic) system. Of Blake's early lyrics,
the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, J. H. Wicksteed
writes: "There is comparatively little actual symbolism, but
there is constant and abundant use of symbolic metaphor." Yeats
has an early essay on the "Ruling Symbols" in Shelley's poetry.
"One finds in his poetry, besides innumerable images that have
not the definiteness [fixity?] of symbols, many images that are
certainly symbols, and as the years went by he began to use these
with more and more deliberately symbolic purpose"—such
images as caves and towers. 12
What happens with impressive frequency is the turning of
what, in a writer's early work, is "property" into the "symbol"
of his later work. Thus in his early novels, Henry James pains-
takingly visualizes persons and places, while, in the later novels,
all the images have become metaphoric or symbolic.
Whenever poetic symbolism is discussed, the distinction is
likely to be made between the "private symbolism" of the
modern poet and the widely intelligible symbolism of past poets.
The phrase was first, at least, an indictment ; but our feelings and
attitude toward poetic symbolism remain highly ambivalent. The
alternative to "private" is difficult to phrase: if "conventional" or
"traditional," we clash with our desire that poetry should be
new and surprising. "Private symbolism" implies a system,
and a careful student can construe a "private symbolism" as a
cryptographer can decode an alien message. Many private systems
(e.g., those of Blake and Yeats) have large overlap with
symbolical traditions, even though not with those most widely
or currently accepted. 13
When we get beyond "private symbolism" and "traditional
symbolism," there is, at the other pole, a kind of public "natural"
symbolism which offers its own difficulties. Frost's poems, some
of the best of them, use natural symbols the reference of which
we find it difficult to control: we think of "The Road Not
Taken," "Walls," "The Mountain." In "Stopping by Woods,"
"miles to go before I sleep" is literally true of the traveler, we
assume j but in the language of natural symbolism, to "sleep" is