The Art of Sinking in Poetry

by Alexander Pope

Written in 1727, this satirical volume was one of Alexander Pope’s contributions to the literary output of the legendary Scriblerus club, a circle of writers dedicated to mocking what they perceived as a culture of mediocrity and false learning prevalent in the arts and sciences. Taking the form of an ironic guide to writing bad verse, Pope’s tongue-in-cheek essay is wickedly funny in its lampooning of various pompous poetasters, and is essential reading for any budding writer wishing to avoid sinking to the unintentionally ridiculous and to instead to reach for the sublime. Several lesser-known pieces by other members of the Scriblerus club are also included.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 18th Century, Criticism, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1727

About the author

People best remember The Rape of the Lock (1712) and The Dunciad (1728), satirical mock-epic poems of English writer Alexander Pope.

Ariel, a sylph, guards the heroine of The Rape of the Lock of Alexander Pope.


People generally regard Pope as the greatest of the 18th century and know his verse and his translation of Homer. After William Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson, he ranks as third most frequently quoted in the language. Pope mastered the heroic couplet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexand...

Reviews

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα δοκίμιο του Alexander Pope (1688-1744), του μεγαλύτερου ποιητή της εποχής του, κατά τον Βολταίρο, ο οποίος ήταν μέλος μιας πολιτικοποιημένης λέσχης μαζί με τον Jonathan Swift (Τα ταξίδια του Γκιούλιβερ).

Μια σημαντική προσθήκη στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“He roared so loud, and looked so wondrous grim / His very shadow durst not follow him.”

These two lines, with which an unidentified author refers to a lion, are the first instance with which Alexander Pope illustrates the use of hyperbole in bad poetry, leaving me with the question whether the unknown poet really meant his exploits to be taken seriously at all. There is another example in this context of how an anonymous poet describes a country prospect,

”I’d call them mountains, but don’t call them so,
For fear to wrong them with a name too low;
While the fair vales beneath so humbly lie,
That even humble seems a term too high.”

There are some few other examples which beg the question as to whether their authors might not have meant their lines tongue-in-cheek after all, like Dickens with his Ode to a Dying Frog, which he attributes to Mrs. Leo Hunter in Pickwick Papers, but on the whole, it is highly amusing to read what Pope has to say about the mechanisms of bad poetry in Peri Bathous, which he writes as a kind of mock-manual on how to compose contemporary poetry, spoofing Longinus’s ancient treaty On the Sublime and showing how many lesser poets of his day get tangled up in their own language or imagery and achieve a ludicrous effect. One may wonder how Pope’s contemporaries might have felt when finding their pitiful endeavours held up so archly and mercilessly to ridicule – as the following masterpiece of tautology:

”Dive – and part – the severed world – in two.”

In some examples, one might even feel touched by the poet’s obvious despair of finding the line-concluding rhyming word and then plummeting into bathos, as here:

”Beasts tame and savage to the river’s brink
Come from the fields and wide abodes – to drink.”

When Pope says that a “genuine writer of the Profound will take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the same time” and that “his thought will appear in a true mist, and very unlike what it is in nature”, I could not help thinking that his observations on the poetry of his time might also well apply to German Idealism or French bullshit philosophy since the 20th century, but that is probably just me. Be that as it may, after reading this delightful mock essay, you will probably be more inclined than ever to call a spade a spade instead of

”Ceres’ sceptre, th’gift of Silvanus’ patience and Vulcanus’ might”.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you been trying to cultivate a profound style with little to no success? Look no further than Peri Bathous: your writing will be transformed!

BEFORE: "Who knocks at the door?"
AFTER: "For whom thus rudely pleads my loud-tongued gate,
That he may enter?..."

BEFORE: "Shut the door."
AFTER: "The wooden guardian of our privacy
Quick on its axle turn..."

BEFORE: "Light the fire."
AFTER: "Bring forth some remnant of Promethean theft,
Quick to expand th'inclement air congealed
By Boreas's rude breath..."

BEFORE: "Snuff the candle."
AFTER: "Yon luminary amputation needs:
Thus shall you save its half-extinguished life."

BEFORE: "Open the letter."
AFTER: "Wax! Render up thy trust..."

BEFORE: "Uncork the bottle and chip the bread."
AFTER: "Apply thine engine to the spongy door,
Set Bacchus from his glassy prison free,
And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat."

I tried so hard to keep from laughing in public that my eyes started watering.

NB: Peri Bathous: or, Martinus Scriblerus His Treatise of the Art of Sinking in Poetry is not the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. They seem to be cross-listed under a certain edition on Goodreads.

Also: Not too much context necessary here - though it obviously helps if you're familiar with Augustan polemics and comfortable with eighteenth-century diction - but it's good to remember that Pope is spinning off Longinus's Peri Hypsous, or On the Sublime, with his mock-art of sinking. It won't determine your understanding of Pope's "treatise," but it'll enhance your sense of his project here.

[Dhruv Bhatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Umar · Rating 3 out of 5]

good short read. a little terse. i like how some of the words are madeup and you don't know if he's being genuine or sarcastic at times. hit upon many things i agree with. i love academic insulting.

[Milo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it is interesting to rest on those examples cited by Scriblerus that are held in some esteem. Milton figures in this regard, with Paradise Lost’s ‘No light, but rather darkness visible,’ an instance of magnifying an object by clouding it at the same time. For a thing to be at once light and dark, a nonsense device. Later we encounter Shakespeare, via Dryden (but essentially: Shakespeare), in one of my favourite turns from one of my favourite scenes: ‘Advance the fringed curtains of thy eyes, | And tell me who comes yonder,’ as spoken by Prospero, an example of the cumbrous and buskin styles. In Pope’s totalizing destruction of 18th century poetry he strikes both back and forwards; one feels that Romanticism, when it did emerge, would have irked the classical core of Pope absolutely. Increasingly deranged metaphors, increasingly removed from the good stuff of sense, chasing mawkish angels. After all, Pope himself had cornered poetry into a mode of sharp, stabbing precision. I know of no other poet for whom the poetic form is more efficient than the essay; indeed, the Dunciad is more efficient than Peri Bathous at saying something more or less the same. A Pope couplet is itself a thing of mathematical wit – and this is never more evident than when seeing the couplets Pope removed, not for their aesthetic weakness, but because they were a false equation. Therefore many of the couplets or lines here fail for just that reason: whatever vivid imagery they may concoct, it is imagery against reality and against nature, so far as it is conceived classically. Pope’s ‘Epistle to Burlington’ falls upon similar aesthetic bounds: that it is upon certain natural laws that creation should rest and sprout, not in the mad designs of yet madder men. Dissonance is, to the mind of Pope so much as those music-makers of his age, a thing inconceivable. All must be melodic, even, and with Pope almost exclusively, the foul and savage ruination of other men. This is the irony of Pope, who argues for good poetry with good poetry, but whose poetic output – at least the best known material – is almost entirely made up of exactly that: the argument. Perhaps Pope had better spent his talent on the subject of his poetry – which is to say, poetry. This would, of course, rob the world of Pope. Let it be as it was.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satirical guide on how not to write poetry, with many brilliantly terrible lines culled from Pope's contemporaries.

I was interested to learn the origin of the word 'expletive', which comes from the Latin expletivus, meaning something which serves to fill out space. Hence expletives in the strict sense of the term are words which are semantically superfluous, and one can see why the hapless poet struggling to fill his metre would have recourse to them.

Th'umbrageous shadow and the verdant green,
The running current and odorous fragrance,
Cheer my lone solitude with joyous gladness.

This is very good indeed, Pope says, but things could be plunged to an even profounder depth by use of the greatest device of all: tautology.

[Ece Arslan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh God. This should be composed as a diss-track.

[jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not smart enough to completely understand the writing, but if you are into satirical ironic books written in incredibly difficult English then this is the book for you. The book centers on Alexander Pope mocking the art of writing poetry or how it is sub-standardly written by writers around him. He establishes many different but common tropes/techniques/ways to write poetry, which bastardises the art of it. Some ideas include writers who romanticise the notion of people that are in complete contradiction of their identity; the overuse of hyperbole; the imitation of notable writers, etc. Basically an incredibly satirical book.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

скверная поэзия всегда была отличным желчегонным средством, просто во времена Поупа говорить о ней еще не приелось. в наши дни тут этим иногда занимается Митя Кузьмин (делает ли его это нашим Александром Поупом?). я бы рекомендовал читать "Пери Батос" всем поэтам, собравшимся где-либо публиковаться (не могу же я запретить им писать)

[Emma Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scathing bit of Pope I enjoyed decently enough. (But not enough to remove an awful lot about it.)

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hilarious parody on poetic epic failures--or let downs, at least. The satirical inversion of Longinus' treatise on the sublime.