Hesse - Bad Poetry

7/28/2019 Hesse - Bad Poetry

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"Bad" Poetry

Author(s): Hermann Hesse and Roy Temple HouseReviewed work(s):Source: Poetry, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Jul., 1947), pp. 202-205Published by: Poetry FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20590131 .

Accessed: 12/02/2012 03:08

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POETRY: A Magazine ofVerse"BAD" POETRY'

ONE day when I was about ten years old, we read in schoola poem whose title, if I remember rightly,was Speckbacher's Little Son. It told about a heroic little boy who foughtthrough a battle, in a hail of bullets, who brought ammunitionto the soldiers andwas a famous hero. The whole classwas filledwith enthusiasm, and when the teacher asked us ironically: "Doyou think that is a good poem?" we all cried excitedly: "Yes!"But the teacher shook his head with a smile and said: "No, thatis a bad poem." He was right, in a way. According to the rulesand the taste of the time the poem was not good. It lackedgenuineness and delicacy, it lacked spontaneity, itwas a crudepiece of work. But ithad given us boys a fine thrillof enthusiasm.Ten years later,when I was in the neighborhood of twenty, Iwould have undertaken to read any poem in the world oncethrough and decide whether itwas a good poem or a bad one.Itwas the simplest thing in theworld. All one needed to do wasto glance at the page, say a few lines over half-aloud, and thethingwas done.

A thirddecade has passed, I have read poems by thehundred,and I am once more in a situation in which I am uncertainwhether any particular bit of verse isgood or bad. A greatmanypoems are brought tome nowadays,most of themby young people who want me to inform themwhether theyare good or badand help sell them to publishers. And the young poets areinvariablystonished nddisappointed hen they iscover hatthisolder poet Hesse, who is supposed to have learned by experience, has learned nothing at all from his experience, but leafs'An abbreviatedversion of Schlechte-Gedichte.

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"Bad" Poetry

helplessly hroughheir anuscriptsithoutmustering he ourage to decide whether theirpoems are good or valueless. Whatat the age of twenty I could do with perfect confidence in twominutes, has grown hard forme now. Perhaps I should not sayhard, 'but impossible. (This thing we call "experience" is apuzzling matter. When we are young we take it for grantedthat it comes automatically. But it isn't as simple as that. Thereare people who have a talent for gaining wisdom from experience; they are experienced when they are schoolboys, they seemtobe born xperienced-and herereother eople, mong homImust listmyself,who can live forty r sixtyor a hundred yearsand be finally gathered to their fatherswithout ever havinglearned r understoodustwhat thisthing experience"s.)My confidence in the evaluation of poems when Iwas twentyyears old reposed on the fact that I had come to love a certain

number of poems and poets so ardently and exclusively that Iinstantlynd instinctivelyompared very ther ook and everyother poem with them. If a poem was like those inmy groupof favorites, itwas good. Otherwise I could see no merit in it.

There are still a number of poets whom I lovewith particularfervor, and some of them are poets whom I already loved attwenty. But today I am inclined to be especially suspicious ofthe poems which sound like theworks ofmy favorite old poets.

I don't propose at thismoment to discuss poets and poetryin general, but only towrite a fewwords about "bad" poetry;that is, about the poems which practically anybody except thepoet himself would instantly classify with mediocre writing,inferiorwriting, writing which might as well not have been.

It often happens to me nowadays that a poem which everybody would agree is bad gives me real pleasure, that I am in

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PO E T R Y: A Magazine of Verse

clined to approve it, even to praise it,while the good poems,even the best poems, often fail to strike a responsive chord inme. I get a feeling that one of these "bad" poems is not badat all, that there is perfume in it, that its very weaknesses andobvious faults are touching, original, dear and charming; and Irealize that a beautiful work of art thatonce charmed has grownpale and conventional.

I can see thatmany of our youngest poets are having the sameexperience. As a matter of principle they have eschewed thewriting of "good" poems. When one of them who still rememibers heold times-Werfel, or nstance-forgetsimselfnow and then and begins to pour his phrases out splendidly inthe old classical manner, itmakes his reader strangely uneasy.The youngest poets, who are never tempted to such lapses, havecome to the conclusion that there are beautiful poems enough intheworld, that theywere not born and set down on this planettomanufacture a fewmore pretty lines, to go on with the gameof patience which their grandfathers started. They are absolutely right, and their poems often have the same appeal, thesame thrill, that I sometimes find in the "bad" verses of whichI spoke.

And the reason is not far to seek. In its beginnings a poemis something very simple and spontaneous. It is a release, acall, a cry,a sigh, amotion, bywhich a soul seeks toward off orrealize a wave of impulse. In this first, riginal, fundamentallyimportant function, nobody has the right to criticize any poem.The inspiration speaks to nobody but the poet himself; it is hiscry,his revery,his instinctive gesture, his smile. Now and thenit happens that a poem does more than afford its author emotional release. Some poems please and inspire other persons

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"Badd" oetrybeside the author. Some poems, that is, are beautiful. Presumably this happens when the poem expresses something thatis common o all humanity,omethinghat ighthaveoccurredto others; but I am not sure of this.

It is at thispoint thatwe are caught in an unfortunate viciouscircle. Because "'beautiful" poems make the author popular, agreat number of poems are composed which have no other ambition than to be "beautiful,"hose authors ave no conceptionof the riginal, rimeval,acredlynnocent unctionf the oem.These poems are no longer dreams or cries of a soul, outbursts ofpain or of happiness, stammeredwish-images ormagic formulae,gestures of a sage or grimaces of amadman-they are only sweetmeats for public consumption. They were made to get gainby providing amusement, instruction, or something else whichpurchasers desire. And such poems are often greeted withapplause. But on the days when the correct world seems topall on me, when I am impelled to break windows and set fireto temples, I discover that all the "beautiful" poems, even thesacrosanct classics, have a feel as if they had been censored,castrated, as if theyhad grown yes-yessy, tame, old-maidish. Onthose days I prefer the bad poems. And theworse they are, thebetter theyplease me.But it isn't long till even the bad poems grow monotonous.The reading of bad poems is only a fleetingpleasure. And afterall, what is thegood of reading them? Why notmake your ownbad poems? Do that, reader, and you will discover that thecomposing of bad poems is a much keener delight than thereading of themost beautiful poems ever written.

Hermann HesseTranslated byRoy TempleHouse205

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Hesse - Bad Poetry