Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and Charles Darwin is entitled to his aesthetic opinions. If he believes that poetry has the highest aesthetic value of all literary genres, (even though he "cannot endure to read a line of poetry," oddly enough), then so be it. I, on the other hand, find it difficult to read a novel such as H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and not feel that it is, if not better than, at least on the same aesthetic level as, well done works of poetry.
Wells does a fantastic job of combining scientific and social ideas, wonderfully done descriptions, and an entertaining plot in The Time Machine to create a novel of high aesthetic value. Throughout the novel, the Time Traveler discusses different scientific and social ideas (i.e. time as the fourth dimension and the evolution of society); and I believe this adds a sense of scientific beauty to the book. Wells also describes scenes throughout the novel in nearly poetic fashion. For example, on page 148 he writes: "The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black." This description, along with many others in the novel, contributes a poetic aesthetic value to the novel. And concerning the aesthetic value of the plot, I would say that the gripping adventure and suspense found in The Time Machine speaks for itself.
Though Darwin is an incredibly intelligent man, and though his ideas concerning the aesthetic values of the different literary genres were held in common among a large part of the Victorian population, I have no qualms about defying his ideas and holding up The Time Machine as an example of a novel that has an aesthetic value equivalent to that of a well done poem.
I think it’s great that you took issue w/ Darwin’s “literary” credentials, especially considering that the excerpt you were reading from was part of his autobiography—as if whatever is written down by a public figure must be read with some kind of authority. In fact, you are right. Perhaps Darwin was simply musing on his own reading practices, and over time, and as a result of his front-and-center placement as the father of evolutionary theory, we have clothed such musings with undeserved (or simply unneeded) critical import. But what, then (really), makes Darwin any less credible a commentator on any kind of natural selection (be it biological, social or literary), than any other critic to whom we pay our respects? Be careful, too, that you don’t throw out his theory for his opinion: Darwin claims that he “cannot endure to read a line of poetry” only AFTER he claims a kind of atrophy of his aesthetic sense. So the question is: what caused this atrophy in the first place (since at one time he did enjoy the likes of Shakespeare and Milton)? What caused the privileging of prose over poetry in our own “coming race”? And why is your opinion about Wells’ _The Time Machine_ necessarily any more respectable than Darwin’s? The fact that your post suggested these such questions and more make it a wonderfully provocative second blog; however, I would have liked to have read a bit more in response to these questions—i.e. to have read that you realized the depths and irony of your own “opinion,” and thus took your investigations as far as they would go. For example, why should I necessarily agree that Wells’ prose is poetic in nature? Why should I agree that the combination of such lyrical prose w/ the scientific and social subject matter—not to mention the “gripping adventure and suspense”—make for a text high in aesthetic value?
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