The Art of Sinking in Poetry by Alexander Pope: book review

The original title, Peri Bathous or The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727, reprinted 2011) is a parody of the Longinus work called Peri Hupsous (Latin for “On the Sublime”). Peri Bathous is Latin for “On the Profound.” This is a short essay of less than 100 pages written to ridicule poets. Alexander Pope was of course a poet himself, noted for his satirical poetry. Pope (1688-1744), born in England, is best known for his poem, The Rape of the Lock (1712). He is almost as universally quoted as William Shakespeare.

Pope states “the great art of all poetry is to mix truth and fiction, in order to join the credible with the surprising.” He adds that “we are born poets” and that his essay aims to “evince the necessity of rules” – these rules being the “art of sinking in poetry.” And, by his own account, he has taken “incredible pains and diligence” to document these rules, and show that there is an art of the profound.

He presents an abundance of poetry examples from his contemporaries, as well as the ancients. He provides examples from Aristotle, Horace, Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Blackmore, Rowe, Dennis, Dryden, and a multitude more, including his own. The detraction is that he doesn’t acknowledge many of the poems, or he uses only the poet’s initials. Fortunately the publisher has added notes to the essay in which he aims to identify the source of the poems for the readers.

Now for the satire – Pope presents examples of poets depicting the creator of the Universe as a painter, a chemist, a wrestler, a recruiting officer, a peacable guarantee, an attorney, a fuller (person who cleans cloth and wool), a mercer or packer (dealer in textiles), a butler, or a baker.

He includes rules for using figures of speech, and provides examples of poetry. These include Catachresis (the poet “trimming himself with a hatchet”), Metonymy (inversion of causes for effects), Synecdoche (use of a part for the whole), Aposiopesis (use of expressions such as “What shall I say?”), Metaphor (describing a thing to an unrelated item such as “love is a rose”), Jargon (slang), Antithesis or Seesaw (contraries or oppositions), Periphrasis (circumlocution – use of unnecessary words), Vulgar (coarse expressions), Infantile (poet’s language is child-like), Inanity or Nothingness (use of nonsensical words or phrases), Expletive (use of offensive words), Macrology or Pleonasm (coupling the “superfluity of words and the vacuity of sense”), and Tautology (saying the same thing in different ways).

Pope then ridicules poets’ styles. These include The Florid (flowery and use of flowers and vegetables), The Pert (prim and polite), The A-la-Mode (style of the day), and The Finical (consisting of the “most curious metaphors”).

He states that the epic poem is “the greatest work human nature is capable of” and proceeds to provide the reader with “a plain and certain recipe” on how to write an epic poem in various types and scenes (fable, episode, moral and allegory, manner, and descriptions).

For example, the “recipe” for an epic fable is: “Take out of any old poem, history book, romance or legend … those parts of the story which afford most scope for long descriptions. Put these pieces together, and throw all the adventures you fancy into one tale. Then take a hero, whom you may choose for the sound of his name, and put him into the midst of these adventures. There let him work for twelve books, at the end of which you may take him out, ready-prepared to conquer or to marry, it being necessary that the conclusion of an epic poem be fortunate.”

For the descriptions recipes, he gives three examples: a tempest, a battle, and a burning town. The recipe for writing a poem with a battle scene is: “Pick a large quantity of images and descriptions from Homer’s Iliad, with a spice or two of Virgil, and if there remain any overplus, you may lay them by for a skirmish. Season it well with similes, and it will make an excellent battle.”

Considering it was written in 1727, it nevertheless provided this reader with fits of burst-out-loud laughing, most inappropriate in a café setting, but I just couldn’t suppress the joy of reading. For such a short essay, Pope crams in a lot of satire. However, if you aren’t keen on reading a 288-year-old essay with the ocassional Latin, the odd “yea” or “nay” or a dose of hubris, then give this a miss.