But this mere
repetition
is not poetry.
Edgar Allen Poe
In enforcing a
truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be
simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a
word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the
exact converse of the poetical. _He _must be blind indeed who does not
perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the
poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption
who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to
reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I
place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the
mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme;
but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that
Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the
virtues themselves. Nevertheless we find the _offices _of the trio
marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns
itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral
Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches
the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with
displaying the charms:--waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of
her deformity--her disproportion--her animosity to the fitting, to the
appropriate, to the harmonious--in a word, to Beauty.
An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a
sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in
the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he
exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of
Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition
of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a
duplicate source of the light.
But this mere repetition is not poetry.
He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with
however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and
odors, and colors, and sentiments which greet _him _in common with all
mankind--he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is
still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We
have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the
crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at
once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is
the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the
Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired
by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle
by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time
to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements perhaps
appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music,
the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into
tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess
of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our
inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever,
those divine and rapturous joys of which _through' _the poem, or
_through _the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.
The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness--this struggle, on the
part of souls fittingly constituted--has given to the world all _that
_which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and
_to feel _as poetic.
The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes--in
Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance--very especially
in Music--and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the com
position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard
only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the
topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in
its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment
in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected--is so vitally important an
adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not
now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps
that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired
by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles--the creation of supernal Beauty.
truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be
simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a
word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the
exact converse of the poetical. _He _must be blind indeed who does not
perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the
poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption
who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to
reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I
place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the
mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme;
but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that
Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the
virtues themselves. Nevertheless we find the _offices _of the trio
marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns
itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral
Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches
the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with
displaying the charms:--waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of
her deformity--her disproportion--her animosity to the fitting, to the
appropriate, to the harmonious--in a word, to Beauty.
An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a
sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in
the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he
exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of
Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition
of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a
duplicate source of the light.
But this mere repetition is not poetry.
He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with
however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and
odors, and colors, and sentiments which greet _him _in common with all
mankind--he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is
still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We
have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the
crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at
once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is
the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the
Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired
by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle
by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time
to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements perhaps
appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music,
the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into
tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess
of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our
inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever,
those divine and rapturous joys of which _through' _the poem, or
_through _the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.
The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness--this struggle, on the
part of souls fittingly constituted--has given to the world all _that
_which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and
_to feel _as poetic.
The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes--in
Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance--very especially
in Music--and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the com
position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard
only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the
topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in
its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment
in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected--is so vitally important an
adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not
now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps
that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired
by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles--the creation of supernal Beauty.
