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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 3, June 1944

Page 9

9
THE POETRY OF WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
by E. A. Edkins

Premier writer of the National Amateur Press Association. Has contributed essays, reviews and poetry to various journals since 1883. Editor and published of the incomparable Causerie and co-editor with Tim Thrift of the best of the amateur magazines, The Aonien.

William Hope Hodgson lacks the poetic gift, principally because he is technically unskilled in poetic forms. "The Voice of the Ocean" is of course largely derivative, and reveals pompous allegories that have been demoded since the time of Keats and Shelley. Some of the classic poets used this form as a medium for the expression of philosophic concepts, naively overlooking the fact that philosophy and poetry are strange bedfellow. In the metaphors and symbolisms employed by Hodgson, one detects an aching sense of beauty, a longing to rationalize and synthesize the emotions of a sensitive mind with the inscrutable brutalities of nature, a yearning to understand the baffling mystery of existence - but unfortunately, not the slightest glimmering of real vision. All of his reactions are the reactions of a bewildered thinker; and when he attempts a really bold flight, his effort to be tragic passes rapidly into melodrama and bathos. It is significant that A. St. John Adcock, who wrote the introduction to "The Calling of the Sea", is careful not to commit himself as to the merits of Hodgson's verse; in fact, he hardly refers to it at all. I am unacquainted with Hodgson's prose fiction, but it is probably vastly superior to his verse. He strikes me as one of those authors who depend a lot on "inspiration" write loosely and rapidly, and never revise their effusions. He probably has a fertile imagination and considerable fluency of expression, but little if any sense of style or cumulative effect.

Fantasy was effectively used by Edgar Poe, both in his prose and verse, but not the fantasy of what I believe is termed "science fiction". So too with Dunsany and Machen. A fantaisist is not necessarily a poet, but the Lords of Poedy are truly fantaisites, living as Beddoes said, "in a world of furious fancies." Hodgson's "Down the Long Coasts" is one of his most appealing poems, and in "Grey Seas Are Dreaming of My Death" he almost becomes articulate. At its worst his work is pure doggerel, as in "The Song of the Great Bull Whale"; at its best, one senses intimations of high emprise, grandiloquent dreams, hopeless frustrations, the unavailing sehnsucht of a soul tormented by beauty sensed dimly through impenetrable veils.

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9 THE POETRY OF WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON by E. A. Edkins Premier writer of the National Amateur Press Association. Has contributed essays, reviews and poetry to various journals since 1883. Editor and published of the incomparable Causerie and co-editor with Tim Thrift of the best of the amateur magazines, The Aonien. William Hope Hodgson lacks the poetic gift, principally because he is technically unskilled in poetic forms. "The Voice of the Ocean" is of course largely derivative, and reveals pompous allegories that have been demoded since the time of Keats and Shelley. Some of the classic poets used this form as a medium for the expression of philosophic concepts, naively overlooking the fact that philosophy and poetry are strange bedfellow. In the metaphors and symbolisms employed by Hodgson, one detects an aching sense of beauty, a longing to rationalize and synthesize the emotions of a sensitive mind with the inscrutable brutalities of nature, a yearning to understand the baffling mystery of existence - but unfortunately, not the slightest glimmering of real vision. All of his reactions are the reactions of a bewildered thinker; and when he attempts a really bold flight, his effort to be tragic passes rapidly into melodrama and bathos. It is significant that A. St. John Adcock, who wrote the introduction to "The Calling of the Sea", is careful not to commit himself as to the merits of Hodgson's verse; in fact, he hardly refers to it at all. I am unacquainted with Hodgson's prose fiction, but it is probably vastly superior to his verse. He strikes me as one of those authors who depend a lot on "inspiration" write loosely and rapidly, and never revise their effusions. He probably has a fertile imagination and considerable fluency of expression, but little if any sense of style or cumulative effect. Fantasy was effectively used by Edgar Poe, both in his prose and verse, but not the fantasy of what I believe is termed "science fiction". So too with Dunsany and Machen. A fantaisist is not necessarily a poet, but the Lords of Poedy are truly fantaisites, living as Beddoes said, "in a world of furious fancies." Hodgson's "Down the Long Coasts" is one of his most appealing poems, and in "Grey Seas Are Dreaming of My Death" he almost becomes articulate. At its worst his work is pure doggerel, as in "The Song of the Great Bull Whale"; at its best, one senses intimations of high emprise, grandiloquent dreams, hopeless frustrations, the unavailing sehnsucht of a soul tormented by beauty sensed dimly through impenetrable veils.