The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1893-02-25
WOMEN AS POETS.
Sood Writers They May lie. but They
Never Have Become Artists.

Eood Writers They May he. but They
Never Have Become Artists.
MI. Edmund Gosse delivered an
address in the hall of Newman col
lege, Cambridge, on THE Poetry OF
Women" taking as his particular
text the poems of Christina Rossetti:
No sound critic will pretend that
woman has added anything to the
sum of male attainment in these ma
jor branches of art. The cas- is
apparently that the artistic nature is
not strongly developed in her. She
has energy, imagination, sentiment,
invention, but she has not the arts
tic impulse. The consummate poets
of the world have been great artists.
In Shakespeare, Corneille, Goethe,
Pope and Keats we see the artist
above all else. above the man of in
tellect or vision. In a much lower
rank of poets we find the vision or
the ethical bias preponderating. In
the greatest men the art is para
mount.
But women, if the main entrances
seem to be denied them, ascend into
the house of poetry by other doors.
Lyrical verse owes SO much to them
that we may easily forgive their
limited success in other directions.
The lyric. which is a spontaneous Jet
of music, an ejaculation forced from
the heart by an excess of feeling, de-
mands less art than any other form
of poetry. 1t is perhaps the only
species of poetry which can be ex-
cellent in it's kind and yet wholly
a~rtless. The border ballads have no
art, and yet + exquisite; and the
history of poetry is adorned by GER
tain female names which will always
preserve their freshness, and which
yet were entirely innocent Of art.
Such are Emily Bronte in England
and Marceline Desbordes- Valmore in
France. We do not know whether,
with extended opportunities, women
will continue to show themselves in
sensible to or incapable of the high
est literary art. Hitherto they Ger.
tainly have been one OF the other.
Any one whose privilege it has
been to enjoy the friendship of sue
cessfll women of letters knows how
much more they are always occupied
with literature as a profession than as
an art; how little they are able to con-
ceive the doing of work for it's own
sake, not for it's result; how consci-
entious. Industrious and persistent
they are. and how little they are
troubled with the scruples and the
lassitude of the artist. 1t is their
lyric gift, their cry from the heights
or the depths of feeling that has won
them that place upon Parnassus from
which nc De Quincy nor Guy de
M%aupassant can eject them.
have denied poetic art to women
mainly that l may give myself the
luxury of attributingit to Miss Chris
tina Rossetti. To screen myself from
the charge of extravaganza l will
say at once that l think the main in
terest of the position of this writer
in the history of poetry is the fact
that she Individually possesses this
quality which is denied to many men
of genius and to almost all women.
Mrs. Browning was a force in litera-
ture-a parsonage demanding uni
versal recognition for her intellectual
power, her majestic imagination and
her independence of other literary
influences, but she was not an artist.
That title applied to George Sand OF
George Eliot would be equally a mis-
homer. What Lord Tennyson was,
what Flaubert was, it is surely plain
that these great women could not be.
But precisely this, in a restricted
measure, it seems to me that Miss
Rossetti is, and that isolation of hers
as apparently the solitary woman
poet of the Anglo-Saxon race who
cultivates poetry as n of the fine
arts, gives the study of her verse al
especial interest. - st. James Ga.
zette.