II All the Questing and the Guessing II: Rrthur Hugh Clough as Proto Modernist A thesis submitted in partial fulftlment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury by Rndre Colwyn ~richard "~. University of Canterbury 1998 I' 9 II' I (JI. qi o() Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Margaret Belcher, for her tireless commitment to this project (and for frequently forsaking her own work in order to devote time to mine). Margaret's input has been considerable and it is warmly appreciated. I would also like to thank Dr. Rob Jackaman, whose contribution to my understanding of Modernism has been invaluable. Gratitude is due too to those friends and colleagues who throughout expressed an interest in my topic. My warmest thanks are offered to my family, and to Chanel, without whom this thesis would not have been possible. Contents Chapter Page Abstract 1 Introduction 2 1. Clough: The Critical Inheritance 7 2. The Treatment of the Past 25 i.) Renovation and the Destructive Impulse 25 of Satire it) Appropriation, Allusion, and the "Mythical 36 Method" 3. Clough and the Modernist Poetic 50 i.) Modernist Poetic Theory and Clough!s 50 Literary Criticism ii.) Language, Form, and Style 60 Chapter Page 4. Selfhood, Estrangement, and the Problematic 84 of Human Identity L) Clough, Alienation, and the Modernist Self 84 ii.) Three Incarnations of the Modernist Hero 96 Conclusion 119 End Notes 123 Works Cited 128 It is not sweet content, be sure, That moves the nobler Muse to song, Yet when could truth come whole and pure From hearts that inly writhe with wrong? It is not calm and peaceful breasts That see or read the problem true; They only know on whom It has prest Too hard to hope to solve it too. Our ills are worse than at their ease Mere blameless happy souls suspect; They only study the disease, Alas, who live not to detect. Arthur Hugh Clough "It is not sweet content, be sure" Duty - that's to say complying With what'er's expected here ... With the form conforming duly, Senseless what it me aneth truly ... Duty - 'tis to take on trust What things are good, and right, and just; And whether indeed they be or be not, Try not, test not, feel not, see not ... 'Tis the stern and prompt suppressing, As an obvious deadly sin, All the questing and the guessing Of the soul's own soul within: 'Tis the coward acquiescence In a destiny's behest, . To a shade by terror made, Sacrificing, aye, the essence Of all that's truest, noblest, blest: 'Tis the blind non-recognition Either of goodness, truth, or beauty, Except by precept and submission; Moral blank, and moral void, Life at very birth destroyed, Atrophy, exinanition! Duty! Yea, by duty's prime condition Pure nonentity of duty! Arthur Hugh Clough "Duty that's to say complying" 1 Abstract In the almost one hundred and forty years SInce the death of Arthur Hugh Clough two assumptions have become more or less universally accepted in the criticism of the poet. The first is that he was an unmitigated failure, both as a man and a writer; the second, originating after about 1930, is that Clough anticipated some of the characteristics of twentieth century Modernism. These generally unchallenged academic suppositions have, however, combined to restrict and deaden the opportunity for unrestrained speculation in Clough scholarship. Most recent work on Clough continues to promulgate both the idea of his difference and lack of success, and to impose, onto the man and his verse, an imprecise and narrow conception of his Modernism. This thesis intends to transcend both of these barriers by at once applying a more scrupulous and scholarly definition of Modernism to the poetry of Clough, and by illustrating the man who emerges through such an examination. By delineating Clough's dissatisfaction with the Victorian period and its poetic, and in the alternative philosophical and poetic stance which we see him assume, we are able to observe how Clough bids farewell to the stability afforded by Victorian retrospection and essentialism, and, in the process, develops a proto-Modernist fragmentation, prospectivity, and dynamism. 2 The art of Arthur Hugh Clough represents dissatisfaction and struggle, but it is not the dissatisfaction and struggle that criticism has generally ascribed to the man. Rather than exemplify failure and weakness, as scholarship has maintained for over a century, Clough embodies a dissatisfaction with society's stagnant conformity and a struggle to destroy this and substitute something new and relevant in its place. His poetry does not aspire to be as Alfred Tennyson's or Matthew Arnold's, a fact which Clough's critics have had difficulty comprehending, but seeks, in its own right, to capture and confine the world that he individually perceives. Clough does not simply yearn to belong, nor does he hurtfully rail because he cannot be accommodated, but, through his poetry, expresses a genuine desire for change and betterment. Clough is a renovator and his poetry both describes and enacts his renovative vision. In the untitled poem that begins "Duty - that's to say complying", Clough describes his discontent with the reversion and conformity of contemporary Victorian society. Subverting the common utilitarian doctrine of action only· if it pleases the greatest number, Clough presents a contrary argument that is most concerned with personal autonomy, his own, and the role of the individual, himself. Parodying the language of Victorian culture and criticism, Clough takes the powerful connotations 3 of "moral" and collocates them with the terms "blank" and "void" (39). He attempts to erode the moral bedrock which underlies Victorian society. Clough asks what is "right, and just". (20), questioning "etiquette" (5), "precept" (38) and "duty" (1), kinship, truth and nobility. At the end of the poem he concludes that something fundamental, and potentially redemptive, is missing from society: "Life at very birth destroyed, / Atrophy, exinanition!" (40-41). His society is seen as a homicide, one that looms, waiting to take life as soon as it is given. This homicide operates by "Atrophyll; it slowly eats away at the body and the spirit until they are wasted and degenerate. "Exinanition" describes a process of exhaustion and personal emptying for the poet, one prompted by his cannibalistic" society. Angered most of all by the opportunity II for speculation and discovery that is either misplaced or misdirected by his contemporaries, Clough laments the conformity - the intellectual and spiritual authoritarianism - that characterises Victorian utilitarianism. Clough sees in the Victorians' rigid prescription of thought and action a disease that threatens to destroy all capacity for individual agency in society. He uses the line "All the questing and the guessing" (29) from this poem (which I have taken as the title of my thesis) both ironically, to criticise the unilluminating and ill directed mode of inquiry common among his peers, and literally, to indicate the very different philosophical journey which he is to undertake subsequently, and in his poetry. In this phrase Clough both connotes the worthlessness and fragility of the Victorian quest for precise moral values it is little more than a hopeful "guess" - and suggests that a divergent path must be taken if the key that would yield the voice of the real world to humanity and to poetry is to be uncovered. Like the medieval alchemist, Clough must experiment if he is to unearth the ingredient which would realise his philosophical and poetic vision. His verse enacts this search. 4 To Clough, his society is distinguished by misguidance and conceit. In an essay entitled "Letters of Parepidemus, Number One" Clough continues where "Duty - that's to say complying" left off. Here he explicitly reproaches Victorian political endeavour: And the whole Anglo-Saxon world of the future will, it is greatly to be feared, go forth upon its way, clearing forests, building clippers, weaving calicoes, and annexing Mexicos, accomplishing its manifest destiny, and subsiding into its primitive aboriginal ignorance. (Prose Works 180) Clough again betrays a deep disillusionment with the actions and conventions of his society. Commercial greed, rampant industrial expansion, and political conquest are all present in this quotation. Clough embeds his sense of a heedless and misdirected society in a few selective, but powerful, cultural symbols. These emblems at once denote English Imperialism, Mercantilism and Industrialism, while at the same time functioning as a compound symbol for an England that is seen, by Clough, to be negligently pursuing a perilous and deleterious path. In the numerous national and international crises in which Great Britain became embroiled during the middle part of the nineteenth century Clough sees tangible evidence of the nation's hazardous course. He is prepared to ~cknowledge the danger and caprice that lie beneath the surface of civilisation and, almost uniquely, to give a voice to this peril. While others, such as Arnold, are also able to perceive some of the disquiet in society, Clough is one of the few who both incorporates and animates it in his verse. Whereas Arnold attempts to suppress, through the construction of certain cultural and moral absolutes, the inconstancy which characterises Victorian society, a· few others are able, like Clough, to begin to embrace it. William