...'
It is dangerous for a poet to conjure up infinities unless he has made
adequate preparation for keeping them in control when they appear. We
are afraid that Mr Aiken is almost a slave of the spirits he has evoked.
Dostoevsky's devil wore a shabby frock-coat, and was probably
managing-clerk to a solicitor at twenty-five shillings a week. Mr
Aiken's incubus is, unfortunately, devoid of definition; he is protean
and unsatisfactory.
'I am confused in webs and knots of scarlet
Spun from the darkness;
Or shuttled from the mouths of thirsty spiders.
Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn.
I tire of the green of the world.
I am myself a mouth for blood....'
Perhaps we do wrong to ask ourselves whether this and similar things
mean, exactly, anything? Mr Aiken warns us that his intention has been
to use the idea--'the impulse which sends us from one dream or ideal to
another, always disillusioned, always creating for adoration some new
and subtler fiction'--'as a theme upon which one might wilfully build a
kind of absolute music.
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