The Poetry of Flecker by James Elroy Flecker
"The Poetry of Flecker" refers to the body of work by James Elroy Flecker, an English poet influenced by the French Parnassian movement. This movement, which emerged in response to the emotionalism of Romanticism, emphasized objective beauty and strict poetic forms. While Flecker admired the Parnassians, his own poetry reveals more of a Romantic influence, showcasing a blend of styles that reflects his struggle to find a singular poetic voice. His works, particularly those inspired by his experiences in the Near East, such as "Gates of Damascus" and "Yasmin," highlight a lush, romantic quality that contrasts with his more modern piece, "Oxford Canal." Despite his talent, Flecker's poetry is often characterized by its inconsistency, making it difficult to categorize him firmly within a distinct literary movement. Flecker’s posthumous play "Hassan," which incorporates several of his lyrical poems, gained him recognition after his death. Comparisons to contemporaries like Rupert Brooke reveal that Flecker's potential was significant, yet he remained somewhat unfulfilled as a poet, remembered mainly for individual pieces rather than a cohesive body of work. His legacy is that of a late Romantic, capturing the complexities of his time.
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The Poetry of Flecker by James Elroy Flecker
First published:The Bridge of Fire, 1907; Forty-Two Poems, 1911; The Golden Journey to Samarkand, 1913; The Old Ships, 1915; Collected Poems, 1916; Hassan, 1922
Critical Evaluation:
It is possible to risk the generalization that there are two types of the minor poet. To one type belongs the writer who fits neatly into the style prevailing at the moment, echoing all of its mannerisms so faithfully that his poems cannot be distinguished from those of any other equally minor figure of the day. Then there is the opposite type, the minor writer who never seems able to settle on any style and whose poems, in consequence, seem to have been written by half a dozen people. It would not be unfair to place Flecker in this second category.
According to J. C. Squire, who wrote the introduction to the COLLECTED POEMS, Flecker was much impressed by the poetic theory of the French Parnassians. Squire then quotes a passage from the preface to THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND in which Flecker expressed his admiration for that school of poetry, which had come into being under the leadership of Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle as a protest against the excessive emotionalism and subjectivity of the Romanticists; in addition, the Parnassians wished to return French prosody to something like its former strictness. According to their point of view, a poem should be purely objective and should rigorously exclude the exploitation of the author’s private feelings. The doctrine of the school has been described as “Spartan”; its culmination as the hundred and eighteen sonnets of Jose Maria de Heredia, a Cuban-born French poet whom Flecker greatly admired. Except for George Moore, who rejected from his ANTHOLOGY OF PURE POETRY in 1924 any verse with a taint of subjectivity, on the grounds that the only permanent world is the world of things, Flecker seems to have been the only English writer influenced by the Parnassian doctrine. He described that which was contrary to the Parnassian principles as dull, vulgar, or obscure versifying.
Flecker’s theorizing is revealed as basically a part of the revolt against Victorianism that began in the 1880’s and continued until World War I. Also, he illustrates another aspect of the rapprochement with French literature that marked this same period; instead of turning to the French Symbolists, as the poets of the generation before his had done, he turned to the Parnassians. Yet it is difficult to find in Flecker’s work (though he translated one of Leconte de Lisle’s poems) any obvious influence of the French school that he so much admired. Indeed, some of his early poems, such as the “First Sonnet of Bathrolaire,” sound amazingly like products of the 1890’s. And there is the inevitable translation from Baudelaire—this time of the “Litany to Satan,” an attempt of which it can be said only that he fared better than did Arthur Symons, a statement that is no great compliment.
But whatever Flecker’s poetic theories may have been, a reading of his verse will reveal a poet working in the Romantic tradition. The years just before World War I represented a turning point in English poetry. There were the Georgians who, reacting against the artificialities of the 1890’s, let sunlight and fresh air into poetry by rediscovering the beauty of the English countryside and the speech of everyday life. At the same time, the hard, dry, intellectual poetry predicted by T. E. Hulme was coming into being; 1915, the year of Flecker’s last volume, saw the publication of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which might be said to have turned modern poetry in its present direction. In only one poem did Flecker attempt the style that we now think of as “modern.” That poem is “Oxford Canal.” On the other hand, such a poem as “Brumana” is very much in the Georgian style, some of its lines recalling the work of Rupert Brooke, with whom Flecker has often been compared.
In 1910, Flecker, who had entered the consular service, was sent to Constantinople and spent most of the few years of life remaining to him in the Near East. What might be called his “Oriental” poems date from this period. These are the poems by which he is best known, and some of them were incorporated into his posthumously produced play, HASSAN. These poems are quite beautiful, even thought somewhat artificial in their carefully cultivated Arabian Nights manner: “Gates of Damascus,” “Yasmin,” “Saadabad.”
It is difficult to believe that the lush, romantic lines of Flecker’s “Oriental” poems were written by the same man who wrote “Oxford Canal” or the terse “Tenebris Interlucentem.”
Although HASSAN is written in prose, this play should be mentioned here, for its posthumous publication and production in 1922 brought Flecker more attention than he had received during his life; and through it he is known to the generation that can remember the 1920’s. Mario Praz, in THE ROMANTIC AGONY, dismisses the play as a “sadistic fantasy,” and it is true that the concluding scene, in which the lovers are tortured to death, is sufficiently gruesome. The plot, which has its roots in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, has a certain degree of tragic intensity, and the dialogue, written in a deliberately overblown, pseudo-Oriental style, is also effective within the framework of the romantic plot. Into the play were incorporated several of the “Oriental” lyrics written earlier, and as part of this adventure of Haroun Al-Rashid, they appear to better advantage than as individual poems. The epilogue to THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND was used as a grand finale to the play, where it makes a moving and memorable conclusion to the tragedy.
Comparison has often been made between Flecker and Rupert Brooke, undoubtedly because they were contemporaries and died during World War I, in which Flecker could not serve because of his ill health. There are some points of similarity, and Flecker’s unfinished “Burial in England” shows that he could have written war poetry of no mean order had he not been a dying man. But Brooke was by all odds the finer poet of the two. In his later poems that emerged from his experiences in the South Seas, he had begun to show what he might have become; he had developed a “style” that was his own. To this point of development Flecker, perhaps because of his physical condition, never attained. He was still groping, still trying to find his own voice, when he died. Hence, he is now remembered for a few individual poems, very different from each other, rather than for a body of work that somehow fitted together. He was a late Romantic, writing at the end of a period.