Abstract

The principle of selection necessarily follows if we accept that a poem is a verbal structure of a very complex kind involving the interaction of all kinds of elements—ideas, images, rhythms, rhetorical features, narrative, logical patterns, whatever. The possible relationships among all these elements seem infinite or at least, in Frye's phrase, unlimited. Hence, a definitive critique of any work seems, even in theory, impossible. It is hard to see how the human mind could consciously contemplate, much less articulate, all aspects at once, even in short pieces; as the various aspects are enumerated, we begin to lose sight of the wood for the trees, to lose our grip on the integrated whole which we at least partially intuit at a given moment in time. And so many are the attitudes and interests which may be brought to bear upon a poem that the critique which once seemed definitive soon seems incomplete to the critic after a further reading, for every time we read a work of any complexity, we find something new; and even the less sensitive know that each new school of criticism, not to mention each latest shift in politics, society, or psychology, will throw at least some of our masterpieces into a new light. As for translation, the only way to avoid it would be wholesale quotation, and even that would be a partial translation in that it would alter the poet's total meaning by substituting a part for the whole. John C. Sherwood, professor of English at the University of Oregon, is the author of articles on Dryden, modern literature, and English composition. He is currently at work on an annotated bibliography of R. S. Crane