Walter de la Mare

Walter John de la Mare, OM CH (April 25, 1873 ? June 22, 1956), was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and "The Listeners". He was born in Kent (at 83 Maryon Road, Charlton[1] - now part of the London Borough of Greenwich), descended from a family of French Huguenots, and was educated at St Paul's Choir School. His first book, Songs of Childhood, was published under the name Walter Ramal. He worked in the statistics department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years while struggling to bring up a family, but nevertheless found enough time to write, and in 1908, though the efforts of Sir Henry Newbolt he received a Civil List pension which enabled him to concentrate on writing.

One of de la Mare's special interests was the imagination, and this contributed both to the popularity of his children's writing and to his other work occasionally being taken less seriously than it deserved.

De la Mare also wrote some subtle psychological horror stories; "Seaton's Aunt" and "Out of the Deep" are noteworthy examples. His 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

The imagination
De la Mare described two distinct "types" of imagination ? although "aspects" might be a better term: the childlike and the boylike. It was at the border between the two that Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest of the great poets lay.

De la Mare claimed that all children fall into the category of having a childlike imagination at first, which is usually replaced at some point in their lives. In his lecture, "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination," he argued that children ". . . are not so closely confined and bound in by their groping senses. Facts to them are the liveliest of chameleons . . . They are contemplatives, solitaries, fakirs, who sink again and again out of the noise and fever of existence and into a waking vision." Doris Ross McCrosson summarizes this passage, "Children are, in short, visionaries." This visionary view of life can be seen as either vital creativity and ingenuity, or fatal disconnection from reality (or, in a limited sense, both).

The increasing intrusions of the external world upon the mind, however, frighten the childlike imagination, which "retires like a shocked snail into its shell." From then onward the boyish imagination flourishes, the "intellectual, analytical type."

By adulthood (de la Mare proposed), the childlike imagination has either retreated for ever or grown bold enough to face the real world. Thus emerge the two extremes of the spectrum of adult minds: the mind molded by the boylike is "logical" and "deductive." That shaped by the childlike becomes "intuitive, inductive." De la Mare's summary of this distinction is, "The one knows that beauty is truth, the other reveals that truth is beauty." Another way he puts it is that the visionary's source of poetry is within, while the intellectual's sources are without ? external ? in "action, knowledge of things, and experience," as McCrosson puts it. De la Mare hastens to add that this does not make the intellectual's poetry any less good, but it is clear where his own preference lies.

A note to avoid confusion: The term "imagination" in the lecture "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination" is used to refer to both the intellectual and the visionary. To simplify and clarify his language, de la Mare generally used the more conventional "reason" and "imagination" when discussing the same idea elsewhere.


The Listeners
"The Listeners" is probably Walter de la Mare's most famous poem. It narrates (in third person) the story of a mysterious man coming to a house in the night on horseback, and subsequently failing, to deliver a message and fulfill a promise. Nobody is there but the "Listeners" (named in the title), who seem to be merely spectral. It is apparent that "The Listeners" hear his knocking and request for assistance, however they choose to ignore it. Some people think that the poem represents missed opportunity on the part of the traveler. The house meant something to him, so he returned to it, but he came back too late and there was nothing left but shadows and memories. Alternatively he may have promised to deliver a message from an acquaintance : "Tell them I came, and no-one answered, but I did keep my word"

It is also sometimes thought to be referenced in The Third Policeman. The Narrator visits a house and knocks twice, but to no avail, as in "The Listeners".

Come Hither
Come Hither was an anthology, mostly of poetry with some prose. It has a frame story, and can be read on several levels. It was first published in 1923, and was a success; further editions followed. Alongside the children's literature aspect, it also provides a selection of the leading Georgian poets (from de la Mare's perspective). It is arguably also the best account of their 'hinterland', documenting thematic concerns and a selection of their predecessors.


Works

Novels
Henry Brocken (1904)
The Three Mulla Mulgars (1910) ? also published as The Three Royal Monkeys
The Return (1910)
Memoirs of a Midget (1921)
At First Sight (1930)

Short story collections
The Riddle and Other Stories (1923)
Ding Dong Bell (1924)
Broomsticks and Other Tales (1925)
The Connoisseur and Other Stories (1926)
On the Edge (1930)
The Lord Fish (1930)
The Walter de la Mare Omnibus (1933)
The Wind Blows Over (1936)
The Nap and Other Stories (1936)
The Best Stories of Walter de la Mare (1942)
A Beginning and Other Stories (1955)
Eight Tales (1971)

Poetry
Songs of Childhood (1902)
The Listeners (1912)
Peacock Pie (1913)
The Marionettes (1918)
O Lovely England (1952)
Silver
"Happy England"

Plays
Crossings: A Fairy Play (1923)

Nonfiction
Some Women Novelists of the 'Seventies (1929)
Desert Islands and Robinson Crusoe (1930)

Anthologies edited
Come Hither (1923)
Behold, This Dreamer! (1939)

Notes
Walter de la Mare. PoemHunter.Com. Retrieved on 23 September 2007.
Sources
Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 96-97.
Imagination of the Heart:The Life of Walter de la Mare (1993) Theresa Whistler
Walter de la Mare (1966) Doris Ross McCrosso


For quiz related to this personality and earn money visit squareroot

Tweet