Page:A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam (1920).djvu/20

xii intelligent persons on the meaning of every line in a dozen sections taken at hap-hazard from the poem.

I have more difficulty in meeting the possible charge that I often insist on finding a definite meaning where there is none; for this charge raises a question too wide to discuss in a Preface. I can only say that, while I have no doubt it may be true as regards some passages, I question the presupposition on which it rests. Apart from defects, fine poetry, I think, is indefinite, in the sense that its language has a vague suggestiveness, on which its virtue largely depends and which disappears in a paraphrase. But this suggestiveness, or untranslateable ‘meaning,’ attaches to a definite mental matter, namely images and thoughts, the outlines of which should be clear to us, however little we may be able to exhaust their significance. We read for the most part half-asleep, but a poet writes wide-awake. His thoughts may be unlike logical statements, and his images may conflict, but they are there and all alive; and our business is to recreate them. We are much mistaken when we foist upon him the misty generalities which his words may at first convey to us. There is no poetry in this indefiniteness, there is simply feebleness of imagination.