Реферат: Louis D Rubin On

in which case the advice is non-scientific and not an advantageous basis for action. If

the former, the poet is not saying anything startling, and certainly a clinical

psychologist could present much more convincing proof of the validity of the action than

the poet would be doing. And if one decides that the advice is not scientifically

plausible, then what else remains? The lines contain nothing but the advice; the

"meaning" represents the lines’ sole reason for being.

Tate’s lines, however, do not simply give "advice"; they do not base their

appeal on their adaptability to counsel. They are not dependent upon any scientific

"proof" of their correctitude. Both alone and in the context of the Ode they create

their own validity. They do not pretend to be representative of scientific knowledge

and proof; they are their own knowledge and proof. They are about serpents and

mulberry bushes and shut gates and decomposing walls, and not advice to graveyard

visitors. Tate’s poem isn’t a mere pseudo-scientific statement, and it doesn’t depend upon

a paraphrase of a scientific statement, and its validity is neither confirmable nor

refutable by scientists. It mayor may not contain a statement of scientific truth, but

that would at most be a portion, only one of a number of parts, involved in the whole

creation of the poem. The poem, therefore, does not depend upon science; science plays

only a relatively minor role. The relationship is obvious to the Agrarian belief in the

equality of the aesthetic pursuits with the scientific.

Tate and his colleagues have insisted in their poetry and criticism that the image

possesses a priority over the abstract idea. They have taken over the pioneering work done

by the Imagists and gone further. They have been instrumental in reviving contemporary

interest in the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, constructed as that poetry

is with complex imagery and metaphor. An idea, Ransom has written, "is derivative and

tamed," whereas an image is in the wild state: "we think we can lay hold

of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the

idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it." The image, Ransom

declared, is "a manifold of properties, like a field or a mine, something to be

explored for the properties." The scientist can use the manifold only by singling out