Universität Potsdam, Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik
PS / Übung. Literaturwissenschaft: „20th century English poetry“
SS 2000

′A Mediation on John Constable′ –
Charles Tomlinson and his poetical concept

by: Bernd Evers

Table of Content

1. Introduction  1

2. „A Mediation on John Constable“ – Charles Tomlinson and his poetical concept

2.1 The poet and the painter

2.1.1 The poet Charles Tomlinson  2
2.1.2 The painter John Constable  3

2.2 The poem

2.1.1 The structure of the poem  4
2.1.2 The content  4
2.1.3 The style  6

2.3 The essence  7

3. Conclusion  9

4. Works Cited  10

A Mediation on John Constable ( 1958 )

“Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry
into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape
painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy,
of which pictures are but the experiments ?”
( John Constable, The History of Landscape Painting )
He replied to his own question, and with the unmannered
Exactness of art; enriched his premises
By conforming his practise: the labour of observation
In face of meteorological fact. Clouds
Followed by others., temper the sun in passing 5
Over and off it. Massed darks
Blotting it back, scattered and mellowed shafts
Break damply out of them, until the source
Unmasks, flood its retreating bank 10
With raw fire. One perceives ( though scarcely )
The remnant clouds trailing across it
In rags, and thinned to a gauze.
But the next will dam it. They loom past
And narrow ist blaze. It shrinks to a crescent 15
Crushed out, a still lengthening ooze,
As the mass thickens, though cannot exclude
Its silvered-yellow. The eclipse is sudden,
Seen first on the darkening grass, then complete
In a covered sky. 20
Facts. And what are they ?
He admired accidents, because governed by laws,
Representing them ( since the illusion was not his end )
As governed by a feeling. The end is our approval
Freely accorded, the illusion persuading us 25
That it exists a human image. Caught
By a wavering sun, or under a wind
Which moistening among the outlines of banked foliage
Prepares to dissolve them, it must grow constant;
Though there, ruffling and parted, the disturbed 30
Trees let through the distance, like white fog
Into their broken ranks. It must persuade
And with a constancy, not to be swept back
To reveal what it half-conceals. Art is itself
Once we accept it. The day veers. He would have judged 35
Exactly in such a light, that strides down
Over the quick stains of cloud-shadows
Expunged now, by its conflagration of colour.
A descriptive painter ? If delight
Describes, which wrings from the brush 40
The errors of a mind, so tempered,
It can forgo all pathos; for what he saw
Discovered what he was, and the hand – unswayed
By the dictation o f a single sense –
Bodied the accurate and total knowledge 45
In a calligraphy of present pleasure. Art
Is complete when its human. It is human
Once the looped pigments, the pin-heads of light
Securing space under their left restrictions
Convince, as the index of a possible passion, 50
As the adequate gauge, both of the passion
And its object. The artist lies
For the improvement of truth. Believe him.

1. Introduction

If you look at a list showing the most important English poets in 20th century literature, Charles Tomlinson is often one of the persons you will miss, or at least, only find in the background. Instead, the list is fixed on poets like Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin or Seamus Heaney. This has got several reasons: it is not the fact that Charles Tomlinson has published only a few works, but it is the difficulty to put him and his poems in one category. Tomlinson, who has published since 1950 in each decade, has been influenced by the different conceptions about art throughout the years.

The poem I want to analyse was written in 1953, at the beginning of Tomlinson’s writing, in a time, when English poetry was dominated by the realistic style of writing of the Movement poets. This poem deals about the English painter John Constable, who is famous for his landscape paintings and especially his cloud pictures. The poem is a good example to show Tomlinson’s position towards the term of “art” in general and his opinion about contemporary poetry. As he is today most famous for his poems about natural phenomena, this poem can be regarded as one of his most meaningful ones. The upcoming analysis should discuss this poem in order to its content, structure and style and should especially answer the question where in the 20th century Tomlinson and his concept of poetry should be integrated and where he stands for.

2. “A Mediation on John Constable” – Charles Tomlinson and his poetical concept

2.1 The poet and the painter

2.1.1 The poet Charles Tomlinson

The English poet Charles (Alfred) Tomlinson was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire on Jan. 8, 1927. After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Tomlinson travelled extensively, especially in Italy and in the United States. He was offered jobs as visiting professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and as professor in literature at Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y. He later became reader and then professor of English poetry at the University of Bristol, Eng. .

Less concerned with people and emotions than with the outside world, his poetry has much in common with that of the American poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. Tomlinson′s early published poetry included Relations and Contraries (1951) and The Necklace (1955; rev. ed. 1966). He has also written, among other volumes, Seeing is Believing (1960) and American Scenes (1966), in which he captures the haunting atmosphere of ghost towns in the desert. Other works include The Poem as Initiation (1968), America West Southwest (1969), and Selected Poems 1951-1974 (1978). With Octavio Paz, Tomlinson wrote Air Born/Hijos del aire (1979), a bilingual English-Spanish volume for which each translated the other′s poems.

Tomlinson is said to be an outstanding translator. His verse translations (in collaboration with Henry Gifford) are Versions from Fyodor Tyutchev (1960), Castilian Ilexes: Versions from Machado (1963), and Ten Versions from Trilce (1970), from the work of César Vallejo. He has also edited a number of critical works, and his series of lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1982 was published in 1983 under the title Poetry and Metamorphosis.¹

2.1.2 The painter John Constable

[...]

1 cf. Meyer’s großes Taschenlexikon. Ohlig, Rudolf ( Ed.). Mannheim: Meyers, 1995.