Yet perhaps some of this same internal externality has been residually
present in the organic tradition all along, tucked inside the original
Romantic metaphors for the ideal poem. As Derrida noted of Schlegel’s
metaphor for the self-contained fragment, the ‘Igel’ (porcupine or hedge-
hog) only curls up on itself when threatened, as when a hedgehog crosses
the road and is almost mown down by the traffic: its perfect self-enclosure,
that is, is actually a sign of a highly defensive relation to a mechanical
outside.^152 And de Gourmont’s perfect shell is, of course, another version
of Schlegel and Coleridge’s organic tree, the form of which symbolises
aesthetic autonomy because it ‘is innate, it shapes as it developes itself
from within’.^153 Whatever its poetic merits, this definition of tree growth
is not very good gardening. The form of a plant is not wholly determined
by its unfolding from within: it needs water, wind, sunlight, gravity and
many other environmental factors to make it the shape it is. Certain
plants prefer specific amounts of light and shade, soil pH, wind or salt,
and will simply grow differently, or not at all, without them. Hence
organic form is not only ‘innate’: plant form is determined by its external
context and situation as well as from within.^154 The following chapters
will trace the influence of that situation on the forms of the poets outside
modernism.
Inside and outside modernism 63