Poetry and History in Neihardt’s Cycle of the West

L U C I L E F. A L Y University of Oregon Poetry and History in Neihardt’s Cycle of the West In the thirties, when two students of Frederick Jackson Turner visited the poet John G. Neihardt in his Ozark home, they repeated Turner’s comment to them, “The poet is the best historian.” Whether Turner meant poets in general or specifically Neihardt, whom, as he knew, the students were to visit, is not clear; but whichever he meant, his provocative words open questions pondered by historians and literary critics, critics at least from Aristotle’s day. In the period of Leopold von Ranke’s dominance over historical theory, the devotion of many historians to documented fact and the protection of history from any taint of imagination or liveliness of style, as historians themselves dis­ covered, deprived them of an enthusiastic reading public.1 Even the passionate, bloody Reformation period could become dishwater dull in the “objective” hands of a dedicated Ranke-ite, and historians, as John Higham observed, began to deplore the “wide gulf between academic historians and the general public.”2 Until fairly recently historians have turned jaundiced eyes on his­ torical fiction for its cavalier inclusion of scenes and dialogue impossible to document, its departure from “what really happened” to build dra­ 1It should be noted that Ranke’s theories have suffered misrepresentation in the popular image assigned to him. He advocated more careful authentication of sources, not the dessication of history. 2History, Harper Torchbooks (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973, copyright 1965), p. 68. 4 Western American Literature matic effects, and its coloring of charactcrs as they might not have been. In defense of historical fiction one critic suggested that readers do not expect perfect accuracy in fiction, but may swallow considerable amounts of fiction in history.s A counter-current began to flow with Sir Walter Scott, who, as Neff said, made historical figures as real to the public as charactcrs in contemporary novels.4 Ranke himself, according to E. M. Hulme, was led to history by reading Quentin Durward.5 Moreover, historians realized that the fiction writer brings history to people who would otherwise not be exposed, and that many people derive their ideas of history from fiction, which sells better than history proper.0 Historians today have learned respcct for fiction writers who base stories on con­ scientious research. Mary Renault, for example, has been praised by historians, and Josephine Tey’s mystery novel, A Daughter of Time, is listed in bibliographies on Richard III. In current theory the stated aims of history and historical literature bear a striking similarity. James Harvey Robinson’s definition of history as “what we know of the past”7 and Havdon White’s description of the historian as performing “an essentially poetic act” to explain “what was really happening”8may justify Russell Nve’s calling history and literature “branches of the same tree.”9 Since both disciplines are concerned with the meaning of experience, the aim of both must be to recreate the past, ordering and interpreting experience so that men may better define their values and better comprehend themselves. Numerous historians grant the need for poetic insight, empathy, and the imagination R. G. Collingwood called for to “spin a web of imagery between fixed points of fact,” or, in Avrom Fleishman’s metaphor, to fill out scenes and characters like a “repairer of tapestry.”10 The process of prefiguring often men­ nW. J. Dawson, quoted in Alfred T. Sheppard, The Art and Practice of His­ torical Fiction (London: Humphrey Toulmin, 1930), pp. 157-158. 4Emery Neff, The Poetry of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 117-118. r,History and Its Neighbors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 123. G John Tebbel, Fact and Fiction: Problems of the Historical Novelist, The Burton Lecture (Lansing: Historical Society of Michigan, 1962), pp. 1-2. 7TVie New History (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922). p. 134. sThe Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1973), Preface, p. x. 9“History and Literature: Branches of the Same Tree,” in Essays on History and Literature, ed. Robert H. Bremner (Ohio State University...