100 3.3 ALLEN TATE: TENSION IN POETRY 3.3.1 Introduction Allen Tate, a great poet and critic was born in Winchester Ky on Nov. 19, 1899. He studied at Vanderbilt University and taught at several institutions including the University of Minnesota. He published some twenty books and received numerous literary honors. He received the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1956. ‘His marriages to the novelist, Caroline Gordon in 1924 and to the poet, Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1959 ended in divorce.’ Tate was identified with the Fugitive group’ at Vanderbilt - John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and others who initiated the Southern Literary Renaissance. He had associated himself with the New Critics and extolled the virtues of the ironic style of moder poetry. “Of his poems ‘Ode to the Confederate Dead’, an exercise in sustained irony seems most likely to outlast changing fashions.” His essays on poetry and ideas influenced a generation of college teachers. His essays of Four Decades appeared in 1969. The essay Tension in Poetry’ is taken from “The Man of Letters in the Modern World - Selected Essays.” It was LA. Richards who first made the distinction between the referential language of science and the emotive language of poetry. Poetry belongs to a separate emotive dimension of language. Following LA. Richards the later critics turned their attention to the special characteristics of poetry. Empson’s ambiguity was essentially a refinement of Richards’ emotive language. New Critics identified the literariness of literature with one particular literary device metaphor, irony, paradox, etc. Allen Tate declares that meaning of poetry (including the literary quality) is its tension. Generally the term tension refers to conflict or friction between opposites. In literary criticism it is a much- used term. Explaining the term ‘tension’ Fowler writes, “Endemic in dialectic thought it has been variously employed in the analysis of the Romantic sensibility and in criticism involving such polarizing conceptions as the Classicism - Romanticism antithesis, the Freudian opposites or Levi-Strauss’s dynamic dualism.” This term is particularly common in discussions of the 20% century poetics. Gottfried Benn describes the Expressionist's medium as that of tension-laden words. ‘The Russian Formalists and their followers describe verse rhythm in terms of the tension between the force of the rhythmical impulse and that of the syntactical pattern.’ Some critics have pointed to the tension inherent in metaphor. Some critics associate Empson’s ambiguity with tension. Empson’s types of ambiguity are studies in different manifestations of tension between simultaneous meaning,’ John Crowe Ransom defines a tension between the logical argument of a poem and its local texture; W.K.Wimsatt implies a tension between the concrete and the universal (or the particular and general). For Tate ‘tension’ means the simultaneity of literal and figurative meaning. Besides, Tate uses the terms ‘intension’ and ‘extension.’ By lopping the prefixes off the logical terms ‘intension’ and ‘extension’,101 he coins the term ‘tension.’ A good poet, according to Tate, is one who fuses together the connotative and denotative aspects of language. Miss Millay’s poem, ‘Justice Denied in Massachusetts’ is not a good poem because the literal and figurative meanings are not fused together properly. Besides the poem uses mass language to arouse affective state. James Thomson’s ‘The Vine’ is a failure in denotation, whereas Cowley's ‘Hymn to Light’ is a failure in connotation. Tate says that, “ Cowley’s failure is somewhat to be preferred; its negative superiority lies in a firmer use of the language.” In Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress’ the tension of the poem gives us the right meanings. Donne’s ‘A Valediction’ is a perfect example of tension. In ‘A Valediction’ the denotative and connotative aspects of language coalesce into tension. Analysing a tercet from Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’ Tate says that Dante’s epic is an excellent example of tension. 3.3.2 Tension in Poetry ‘There are several common features in poems and one of them, according to Tate, is ‘Tension.’ Tate believes that tension is absolutely an essential part of good poetry and it is this quality — i.e, tension that makes a poem literary or artistic. If a poem lacks in tension, it will cease to be artistic or literary, Tate asserts. There are several kinds of poetry ~ political, picturesque, didactic and personal poetry and poets try to communicate some ideas through poems and for this purpose they use mass language. Mass language has become the medium of communication and the poets are interested only in kindling the feelings of the readers. Allen Tate cites Miss Millay’s poem ‘Justice Denied in Massachusetts’ as an example of mass language used in arousing the affective state. Miss Millay says that her ancestors made the earth a good place and that has somehow gone bad. What is the reason for the desiccation? Miss Millay hints that the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti is associated with the rotting of the crops. But the connection is never made clear. The effect of the poem is sentimentality. Tate says that he does not share those feelings with the poet and hence the entire poem remains obscure Tate is attacking the fallacy of communication in poetry. The 19 century English verse is poetry of communication. Poets secretly thought that science could be a better vehicle to communicate ideas. Nowadays poets use the term ‘social sciences’ when they refer to a certain kind of poetry. It is a fashion today to call poetry a ‘social science.’ Ridiculing such attitude, Tate warns that the poet will abdicate his position as poet if he reduces poetry to the level of science. Allen Tate cites a 19 century lyric ‘The Vine’ by James Thomson as an example of ‘this brand of obscurity.’ The language of the poem appeals to an affective state. It has no coherent meaning either literally or in terms of ambiguity. The poem could be easily paraphrased without any difficulty. Tate says, “The more closely we examine this lyric the more obscure it becomes; the more we trace the implications of the imagery the denser the confusion.” The image adds nothing to the general idea that it tries to sustain. Tate notices a particular kind of failure in102 the poem and he compares the failure of this poem with Cowley’s ‘Hymn to Light.’ Cowley’s ‘Hymn to Light’ is a metaphysical poem. However bad the lines may be - they have no qualities in common with ‘The Vine.’ Though Cowley’s ‘Hymn to Light’ is a metaphysical poem, there is a world of difference between Donne's ‘A Valediction....’ And Cowley’s poem. ‘The Vine’ and ‘Hymn to Light’ appear to be equally bad. Tate holds the view that Cowley’s failure is somewhat to be preferred, because its negative superiority lies in a firmer use of the language. There is no appeal to an affective state and the leading statement can be made perfectly explicit. God is light and light is life. Every term, even the verbs converted into nouns denotes an object. The simple analysis of the term ‘God’ gave him the preposition: God is light. While developing the symbol by synthetic accretion, Cowley adds to light properties not inherent in its simple analysis. “The violet springs little infant stands, Dirt in thy purple swadling bands...” Here we find a miscellany of unrelated objects such as light, diapers and violets. ‘The Vine’ is a failure in denotation. ‘Hymn to Light’ is a failure in connotation. In ‘Hymn to Light’ the terms ‘violet’, ‘swadling bands’ and ‘light’ may be unified only if we forget the firm denotation of the terms. Tate declares, ‘good poetry is a unity of all the meanings from the farthest extremes of intension and extension, What is the central achievement in poetry? Tate declares that the central achievement of poetry is its ‘tension.’ He is not using the term ‘tension; as a general metaphor, but he uses it as a special one. He gives us a different definition for the term ‘tension.’ By lopping the prefixes off the logical terms extension and intension he invents the word ‘tension.’ Tate argues forcefully that the meaning of poetry is its tension. The figurative significance does not invalidate the extension of the literal statement. Tension, according to Tate, means the simultaneity of literal and figurative meaning, To show what he means by tension, Tate examines two metaphysical poems. First he analyses Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress’. The Platonists and the traditional critics hold the view that the poem recommends immoral behavior. But the tension of the poem reveals that the meaning has nothing to do with immoral activity. The literal statement of the poem ~ i.e. the lover-mistress convention is fused with the figurative meaning ~i.e. the conflict of sensuality and asceticism. Quoting a stanza from Donne's ‘A Valediction....’ Tate shows another example of tension. “Our two soules therefore, which are one, Though I must goe, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aiery thinnesse beate.” Here the lovers’ souls is a nonspatial entity and is therefore indivisible. The interesting feature is ‘the logical contradiction of embodying the unitary nonspatial103 soul in a spatial image. The malleable gold is a plane whose surface can be extended towards infinity. The souls are this infinity. ‘ The finite image of the gold, in extension, logically contradicts the intense meaning (infinity) which it conveys; but it does not invalidate that meaning.’ ‘The clear denotation of the gold contains, by intension, the full meaning of the passage. The meaning is wholly absorbed into the image of the gold. Intension and extension are here one, and they enrich each other. While trying to show tension in metaphysical poetry, Tate points out the difference between the metaphysical poet and the symbolist poet. The metaphysical poet begins at the extensive or denoting end of the line, but the symbolist begins at the intensive end and each tries to push his meanings as far as he can towards the opposite end so as to occupy the entire scale. Tate has shown one good and one bad example of metaphysical strategy but only the defective example of the symbolist, which he cited as fallacies of mass language. There are several great symbolist poets such as W.B.Yeats, who have successfully embodied their connotations in a rational order of thought. Commenting on Arnold's touchstones, Tate says ‘they are not poetry of extremes, but poetry of the center: poetry of tension, in which the strategy is diffused into the unitary effect. ‘As a last example of tension, Tate takes a tercet from Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’. ‘The passage chosen for analysis is not a difficult passage. Paolo and Francesca were illicit lovers. Dante has placed them in the damned second circle, Their crime was incontinence. When Dante sees the lovers, they are whirling in a high wind (symbol of lust). When Francesca’s conversation with the poet begins, the wind dies down and she tells him where she was born in these lines: ‘The town where I was born sits on the shore Whither the Po descends to be at peace ‘Together with the streams that follow him. ‘These lines were translated (from Italian into English) by Courtney Landon, The translated version misses a good deal; it misses the force of seguaci_by rendering it as a verb (follow). Professor Grandgent translates the this line: ‘To have peach with its pursuers’ and comments: ‘The tributaries are conceived as chasing ‘the Po down to the sea.’ If the ‘seguaci’ are merely followers and not pursuers also, we miss the density of this simple passage (the meaning of the poem). Although Francesca has told Dante where she lives, she has told him more than that. “Without the least imposition of strain upon the firmly denoted natural setting, she fuses herself with the river Po near which she was born.” We see the pursued river as Francesca in Hell; the pursuing tributaries are a new visual image for the pursuing winds of lust. The tributaries pursue and become one with the pursued. In other words Francesca has completely absorbed the substance of her sin - she is the sin,