Eliot's "Reflections on Vers Libre"

By Roger Emmelhainz
T.S. Eliot's well-known essay "Reflections on vers libre" is a notable manifestation of the author's pen­chant for presenting excellent, intriguing, even strik­ing passages and insights (and this is occasionally true in his verse as well as his criticism), without managing to coalesce the insights into an effective whole. In this particular case, he marshals arguments containing a number of suggestive insights into the nature of verse and its development, and then attempts to draw a con­clusion unmerited-in fact opposed-by the material he bring to bear on the subject.
Eliot argues that vers libre ("free verse") is not even to be given the credit of being criticized as a potentially viable aesthetic theory. He believes that vers libre is not and never can be a legitimate school: "vers libre does not exist, and it is time that this pre­posterous fiction followed the elan vital and the eighty thousand Russians into oblivion/' Beginning his argu­ment proper with the wanton assertion that vers libre "is a battle-cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art"-his later observations on "the most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language" demonstrate that he himself will not accept this state­ment absolutely (see below)-, Eliot then suggests that "If vers libre is a genuine verse-form it will have a positive definition," yet one can "define it only in neg­atives"; but let us leave aside the issue of the largely semantic distinction between positive and negative definitions. Eliot's real argument centers on his defi­nition of vers libre as "(1) absence of pattern, (2) absence of rhyme, (3) absence of metre."
The argument, on its own terms, is valid and justifiable. Absence of metre is a nonsensical concept; one might employ scansion on any collection of sylla-bles-and by implication, prosaic speech is in fact met­ric in nature. Absence of rhyme had been employed and embraced by innumerable English versifiers long before the emergence of "vers libre" as a movement.
And true absence of pattern, Eliot maintains, degener­ates inevitably into chaos-or at least into prosody-, while the best of vers libre is marked not by "absence of pattern" but by its tantalizingly obscure presence. From this argument, Eliot concludes that "the division between Conservative Verse and vers libre does not exist, for there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos."
This conclusion is where the essayist intro­duces his characteristic questionable extrapolation from a solid argument-in this case, revealing that his definition of vers libre is in large part a "straw man." That vers libre defines itself in much the same manner as does Eliot is true. That vers libre cannot exist as defined is also true. We may now safely conclude that the type of verse sketched in Eliot's definition does not exist; we might conclude as well that the name "vers libre" is a misnomer; but it is not valid for Eliot to con­clude that there exists no form of verse signified by that perhaps mistaken phrase. I would argue that there in fact exists something both unique and valuable known by the name of vers libre-and it is Eliot himself who offers all the necessary arguments to defend both parts of this proposition.
Eliot argues, as mentioned above, that vers libre is not truly "free" because its only worthwhile representatives function on the boundaries of blank verse-"the constant suggestion and the skilful evasion of iambic pentameter." He then transitions into a dis­cussion of the way in which John Webster and other early 1 "th-century dramatists (such as Shakespeare) produced the same effect by approaching the boundary of metre from the other direction: the simultaneous "evasion and recognition of regularity." These drama­tists functioned within a metric framework that they often violated for various effects. This digression offers no direct support for Eliot's argument, but indi­rectly it provides us with support for our redefinition of the import of vers libre: we have now an illustration of that phenomenon in "conservative" verse, the inverse of which is likewise the mark of mastery in "free" verse. As Eliot concludes, "freedom is only truly freedom when it appears against the background of an artificial limitation"-conceding the possible exis­tence of freedom in close enough proximity to regula­tion as to retain the quality of "verse," although we may want to qualify his absolute statement, such that "freedom may only be recognized to be freedom" in this situation. Just as regular verse does not cease to be largely regulated as it crosses the boundary condition, so also free (or unregulated) verse does not cease to be essentially free by flirting with a mask of metricism. In fact, the most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language has been done either by taking a very simple form, like the iambic pen­tameter, and constantly withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly approxi­mating to a very simple one. It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived eva­sion of monotony, which is the very life of verse.
These comments point the way to an intriguing theory of aesthetics: that the greatness of art is produced out of the plexus between form and chaos. The artist is the one who can create by contradiction-art is play, as it were, within the Dionysian! But this is not directly rel­evant to the point; it serves rather to illustrate the focus, as it were, of verse, allowing us better to under­stand the relation in which vers libre stands to conser­vative verse, vers libre is the far side of the boundary condition; it approaches this plexus in exactly the same manner as the best of the 17th-century iambic pentametrists-only approaching from the opposite direction.
This, then, is the first error of Eliot: vers libre in fact exists. It is not, perhaps, what it thinks itself to be-it does not function without recourse to pattern or metre-but it is quite definitely a verse-form, not mere­ly a variant on blank verse, to which Eliot hoped to reduce it. It is moreover unique, as posited above; it is not just "another" verse-form, a variant within the
same structural scheme (as iambic pentameter is to, e.g., dactylic tetrameter) but one which holds a posi­tion in opposition to all other verse-forms. Its play in the boundary condition moves in the opposite direc­tion to that of traditional verse, and as such "the divi­sion between Conservative Verse and vers libre" does in fact exist.
It will not suffice, however, merely to disagree with Eliot in the particulars of his conclusion; the heart of his animosity will only be dispersed upon the estab­lishment, not only of the existence, but also of the importance and even value of vers libre to the revitalization of poetry. And it is here that, once again (and characteristically), Eliot himself provides the evidence that shall, when reapplied more effectively, produce for us a worthwhile conclusion.
The relevant comments in Eliot's piece concern the advent of rhymeless verse and its significant con­tribution to the art of poetry-the other major digression of the essay, offering fascinating insights which pro­vide no direct support to Eliot's actual argument. "Excessive devotion to rhyme," Eliot argues, "has thickened the modern ear." Abandonment of rhyme has several significant effects. It makes the actual dic­tion and grammatical constructions more significant, without a comforting "form" within which to obscure negligence. It allows "much ethereal music" to'reveal itself from within the word-"music which has hitherto chirped unnoticed in the expanse of prose." But most importantly, it frees rhyme from "its exacting task of supporting lame verse," allowing it to be applied with greater facility and greater effectiveness. In essence, the advent of blank verse has added a new technique to the arsenal of the poet.
The key to the importance of vers libre is the realization that every point that Eliot makes in praise of unrhymed verse (and Eliot himself was perhaps the master of this effective use of rhyme within the con­text of its absence) applies with equal validity to the nature of the contributions of unpatterned or "free" verse. Without the comforting regularity of a patterned metrical structure, rhythm-and particularly fluctuations therein - is free to become a more effective tool, while simultaneously one more distraction from the while simultaneously one more distraction from the language of the poet is removed. Verse that is both patternless and rhymeless-which we must recall to be verse that, if well-accomplished, plays at the borders of both rhyme and pattern-is verse requiring a greater mastery of language than any other verse-form, vers libre must be an even more delicate endeavour than blank verse, perhaps the most ambitious verse-form yet conceived; it must be expected often to fail-but the very act of avoiding this failure may well promote the work to greatness, being birthed so close within the perilous Dionysian realm.