Strong opinions

3 TO THE EDITOR OF ENCOUNTER

published April, 1966

I am glad that Mr. Fussell has nothing against my notes on prosody provided they remain attached to a work of repelling length and limited appeal. I am amused by his objecting to them when published in the form of a separate, easily available little volume. In my turn, I object to his assuming that my dislike for the French pseudoclassical style as borrowed and reworked by English poets is based «on the eighteenth century's performance in tetrametric verse». Before dragging in Pope's pentameter and Sterne's prose in redemption of a literary era, he should have looked up what I say about Pope and Sterne in my Eugene Onegin commentary. I do not know who «Baron Corvo» and (Professor?) Firbank are, or what bearing «Camp» (Campus?) products have on the texture of tetrameters; but I am quite certain that there is no connection between random samples of tetrametric rhythms as discussed in a serious study and what Mr. Fussell comically calls «the overtones of the English Protestant sense of duty». The presence or absence of scuds in a given passage may often be accidental but only a Philistine can assert that the accidental is «undiscussable». If Mr. Fussell is puzzled by my having had to invent terms for new or unfamiliar concepts, it only means that he has not understood my explanations and examples. The purpose of my little investigation was to describe (not to «interpret») certain aspects of verse structure. I suspected that my views would irritate the conservative professional in his fondly tilled field, but I was hardly prepared for the sparkling flow of academic kitsch with which Mr. Fussell now regales me.