Poetry for Poetry's Sake

Poetry for Poetry’s Sake was an inaugural lecture given at Oxford University by the English literary scholar Andrew Cecil Bradley on 5 June 1901, and published the same year by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. The topic of the speech is the role of subject in poetry and how a poem’s poetic worth cannot be attributed to solely form or substance.

Content of lecture

Bradley defines the actual poem as "the succession of experiences – sounds, images, thoughts, emotions – through which we pass when we are reading as poetically as we can." (7). He acknowledges that this "imaginative experience" will change depending on the time in which the poem is read and the individual reader. A poem possesses poetic value if it satisfies our imagination; it does not need to engage our knowledge or conscience, though it may be valued for its cultural or religious worth. Poetry can serve a variety of purposes, such as to aide a good cause, provide instruction, or make the poet rich and famous, but these purposes do not contribute to the determination of the poem’s poetic worth.

For Bradley, the act of reading a poem “is an end in itself," (7–8). To experience a poem, "you must enter the world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality", (8). Poetry is its own world instead of a representation of reality, "poetry neither is life, nor, strictly speaking, a copy of it," (9–10). The aim of poetry is to satisfy the imagination, in contrast to life, which rarely satisfies the imagination.

Bradley employs a different definition for the term subject by defining the poem’s subject as distinct from the poem’s matter. By claiming the opposite of the poem’s subject is the poem itself, he argues the poetic value lies in the poem instead of the subject. A poem recognized as possessing high poetic value may have a trivial subject, while a poem lacking merit may have a subject generally viewed as substantial, worthy, or engaging. A good poem can be composed on any subject, though the general audience may perceive certain subjects as unworthy. Therefore, a poet may debate whether to publish his poem if he anticipates that the subject will not be well received, but this is a matter of ethics and not art.

Bradley disagrees with the claim of the formalists that all subjects are equal in poetry, but he agrees that the subject cannot determine the poem’s value. He used the example that a bad poem could be written on the Fall of Man while a good poem could be written on the subject of a pin’s head. Bradley contests the formalists' claim that the subject is indifferent by stating: "The Fall of Man, that is to say, offers opportunities of poetic effects wider in range and more penetrating in appeal. And the truth is that such a subject, as it exists in the general imagination, has some aesthetic value before the poet touches it," (15). Some subjects will already evoke certain associations and have a stronger appeal to the imagination; therefore, certain subjects intrinsically have more merit than others.

Bradley explains his use of the term substance as the definition normally ascribed to the term subject. He uses the example of Paradise Lost by John Milton to illustrate what he means by substance. The subject of the work would be the Fall of Man, but the substance of the work is the figures, scenes, and events that resemble the Fall of Man. Bradley claims that the extreme formalists place all of the value of a poem in its form because they perceive form’s opposite to be the poem’s subject. The reader, in contrast, protests the dismissal of the importance of subject, but much of the reader’s praise of the poem’s subject, in actuality, should be bestowed upon its substance, the true content of the poem.

The argument that poetic value lies solely in either the poem’s form or substance implies that each can be discussed without an awareness or understanding of the other. Form and substance are distinct concepts in that one refers to the measured language itself and the other refers to the ideas and images present in the poem. Within the poem, both contribute to the poetic experience, so the value cannot lie with solely form or content. The reader simultaneously appreciates the meaning and the sounds of the poem, and both subject and form are influenced by the reader’s experience of the other, "if you want to have the poem again, you cannot find it by adding together these two products of decomposition; you can only find it by passing back into poetic experience," (19). When looking at a poem, it is useful for the reader to be able to separate substance and form as long as the reader recognizes that he can never truly think of them apart.

Because the meaning is linked to both the substance and form of the poem, to compose a poem is to develop its meaning. A poet only learns his intention after the poem is completed, for if he knew what he meant to say before writing the poem, the poem would already be written.

To change the words of a poem is to change its meaning. Bradley cites the example of the famous line from Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the question," (24–25) and explains how this line literally means the same thing as saying "What is just now occupying my attention is the comparative disadvantages of continuing to live or putting an end to myself," (24–25), but paraphrasing the line changes the reader’s perception of Hamlet, and thus the meaning of the work.

A translation will be similar to the original poem in meaning but less so in form. The sound of a word contributes to the images evoked by that word, so any alteration of the words through translation will change the reader’s impression. Bradley uses the example of the line from the The Aeneid by Virgil, "Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore," (25) and translates is as "and were stretching forth their hands in longing for the further bank." He notes several reasons as to why the translation lacks the original’s charm: because he has taken Virgil’s five words and replaced them by twelve words, the beauty of verse was lost when he transformed the line into prose without rhythm, and most importantly, because the meaning has changed. He asserts that the meaning of a poem is affected by the words themselves; the sound of a word, the time it takes to read the phrase, the combination of sounds, all contribute to "the poetic meaning of the whole," (26).

Bradley describes the appeal of poetry by stating, "The poet speaks to us of one thing, but in this one thing here seems to lurk the secret of all." (31). He says the suggestion of perfection can be found in many poems, and he completes the speech by saying that poetry, "is not our servant; it is our master," (32).