ELT Forum

ELT FORUM 1. Two Kinds of Ecstasy. Why is ecstasy, though frequently evoked, so often an artistic failure in late Victorian and early modern literature? This question was asked repeatedly at the Chicago Conference. Hopkins and D. H. Lawrence were cited as exceptional in that they closely approached the emotional heights achieved by the romantics almost a hundred years before. I suggest that the reason for Hopkins' and Lawrence's success lies not only in their genius but in the nature of the experience they attempted to convey. Theirs was a transcendental ecstasy, a liberation from the bonds of self through intense emotional identification with an object beyond the self. It belongs, therefore, to the tradition of mysticism, whether religious or romantic. Wordsworth's "presence," Shelley's "unseen Power," Keats's "immortal Bird"—all cited by Professor Lester^--are a part of this tradition, like Lawrence's mystique of the lover and Hopkins' vision of God. Pater's "hard, gemlike flame" masquerades as ecstasy but derives from an entirely different kind of experience. It seeks not a transcendence of self but an intensified self-awareness, the process of "getting as many pulsations ae poseible" into a lifetime. Professor Lester is conscious of the difference; he describes "latter-day" ecstasy as "less a Pisgah-sight of ultimate truth than a subjective emotional tumescence" (p. 203). But he assumes that all "latter-day" ecstasy, that is, ecstasy of the 1880-1920 period, is subjective. He classifies it according to subject matter as spiritual, naturalistic, psychological, and aesthetic but makes no distinction within each class as to the inward or outward direction of the ecstatic experience. His illustrations are drawn from authors as diverse as Hopkins, Lawrence, Pater, Symons, and Joyce. The question asked at the Éonference can be answered, I believe, only if ecstasy as transport is distinguished from ecstasy as self-awareness. Both have their roots in the past: ecstasy as transport in mysticism, ecstasy as self-awareness in "exquisite sensibility." Both look toward the future: ecstasy as transport to the new mysticism of the forties, ecstasy as self-awareness to the literature of fluid consciousness. Both can be successful or unsuccessful artistically. But if we expect transport from self-awareness or self-awareness from transport, we shall continue to wonder at the number of failures. Our first task as critics is to restore a distinction which was blurred linguistically, though it survived in fact, during the transitional years. NOTES 1 John A. Lester, Jr. , "The Consolations of Ecstasy," ELT, Vl: 4 (1963), 200-11. Finch College Carol Hawkes 13 Vers de Société and Decadent Poetry: Descriptive Comments on Continuity. After hearing the excellent summaries of the two papers and the subsequent discussion at Conference 2 of the recent MLA meeting and on reading the "Random Conference Notes" (ELT, Vl: 4 [1963 3), ! wondered what the relation was between vers de société, which is nearly forgotten, and Decadent poetry, which is still being observed and described. After reflection and some investigation, I discovered some rather important links in continuity, despite the difference of immediate origi ns--the light verse of Banville for vers de socie'te7 and the serious symbolist verse of Verlaine and Mallarmé' for Decadent poetry. The connecting links which I thought of or discovered (with no pretence to exhaust i veness) are Old French forms, color images, epicureanism, funambulism, and art for art's sake. Interest in Old French forms constitutes a direct line from the Pre-Raphaeli tes through the poets of vers de société and to the Decadents. Rossetti and Swinburne showed special interest in the ballade; Lang indicated that he was inspired to form a new school on the interest of the older poets; Dobson and Gosse produced the largest amount and the most varied examples of experimentation with the half dozen or so forms; and Dowson was very successful with the villanelie. Color images also form a direct line from the Pre-Raphaeli tes to the Decadents. The following instances illustrate the continuity: gold and yellow in Rossetti's "The Blessed Damozel"; purple, green, blue, white, gold, and red in Morris's "The Blue Closet"; green, blue, and white in Dobson...