In chapter 32 of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë offers a curious passage, in which St. John Eyre Rivers offers Jane a volume of poetry. The volume, it turns out, is Scott’s Marmion, which was published almost forty years before Jane Eyre. The reason I call it curious is that it almost sounds like the author is stepping out of the narrative to share a small rant with the reader. It’s a rant about poetry and it sounds oddly contemporary. It’s a rebuttal of the accusation that poetry is dead and an affirmation of poetry’s importance. Published 165 years ago, the passage serves as a reminder that the poetry debate is nothing new. People have been going on and on for ages about how poetry is irrelevant, or about how all the best poets died years ago and have left us with a lot of blethering half wits. And other people—like Charlotte Brontë—have been answering them with resounding cries to the contrary.
I no longer bother with this kind of argument. Poetry is obviously alive and well and vibrant, and it stands as its own proof that the detractors are wrong. There have always been and always will be people who don’t get poetry. Most of them have the good sense to shut up around those who do, but not everyone is blessed with good sense. The claim that poetry is dead says nothing about the state of poetry, but much about the speaker. Let’s be honest: this isn’t really about poetry. People make the same claim in every discipline. Religion is dead. The theatre is dead. Education is dead. Feminism is dead. Ethics is dead. Music is dead. Literature is dead. The book is dead. Letter-writing is dead. Spelling is dead. Grammar is dead. Science is dead. But these aren’t claims; they’re expressions of fear.
Here is the passage from Jane Eyre:
“I have brought you a book for evening solace,” and he laid on the table a new publication—a poem: one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness.