The objective poet, 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, not as the Abbaté 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. E. A. POE, The Poetic Principle, 1844. Doubtless we accept gladly the biography of an objective poet, as the phrase now goes; one whose endeavour has been to reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenic universe, or the manifested action of the human heart and brain) with an immediate reference, in every case, to the common eye and apprehension of his fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving and profiting by this reproduction. It has been obtained through the poet's double faculty of seeing external objects more clearly, widely, and deeply, than is possible to the average mind, at the same time that he is so acquainted and in sympathy with its narrow comprehension as to be careful to supply it with no other materials than it can combine into an fashioner. intelligible whole. Such a poet is properly the Torns, the We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency the subjective poet of modern classification. The subjective poet, He, gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth-an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees-the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand—it is toward these that he struggles, not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs where he stands,-preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet . . . is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. fashioner. R. BROWNING, On the Poet, Objective and Subjective, 1851. a seer rather than a The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: Their Poetry compoetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine wit poetry is conceived and composed in the soul. M. ARNOLD, Essays in Criticism, 1865. posed in the Poetry com posed in the soul. Imitation. Comedy and tragedy an imitation. An art of imitation, mimesis. Poetical imitation. Its con POETRY AS AN IMITATIVE ART IMITATION is a faculty to express lively and perfectly that example which ye go about to follow. And of itself it is large and wide; for all the works of nature in a manner be examples for art to follow. R. ASCHAM, Schoolmaster, 1570. The whole doctrine of comedies and tragedies is a perfect imitation, or fair lively painted picture of the life of every degree of man. Ib. Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture.. Sir P. SIDNEY, Apology for Poetry, c. 1583. That imitation, whereof poetry is, hath the most conveniency to nature of all other, insomuch that, as Aristotle veniency to saith, those things which in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are made in poetical imitation delightful. nature. Poetry an art of making, Ib. A poet is as much to say as a maker. . . . Such as (by way of resemblance and reverently) we may say of God; who without any travail to his divine imagination made all the world of nought, nor also by any pattern or mould, as the Platonics with their ideas do fantastically suppose. Even so the very poet makes and contrives out of his own ... brain both the verse and matter of his poem, and not by any foreign copy or example, as doth the translator, who therefore may well be said a versifier, but not a poet. And nevertheless, without any repugnancy at all, a poet may in some sort be said a follower or imitator, because he but also of can express the true and lively of everything is set before him, and which he taketh in hand to describe ;. and so in that respect is both a maker and counterfeiter; and poesy an art not only of making, but also of imitation. G. PUTTENHAM, Art of English Poesy, 1589. imitation. imitation. Poet[s], whose art is but an imitation (as Aristotle An art of calleth it), and therefore are allowed to feign what they list. Sir J. HARINGTON, Brief Apology for Poetry, 1591. Poesy . . is nothing else but feigned history (see pp. 85, 86). Poetry feigned history. about F. BACON, Advancement of Learning, 1605. Poetry and picture are arts of a like nature, and both An art busy are busy about imitation. It was excellently said of imitation. Plutarch, poetry was a speaking picture, and picture a mute poesy. For they both invent, feign, and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use and service of nature. B. JONSON, Discoveries, 1620-1635. кат It invents feigns, and devises. imitation or A poet, poeta, is that which by the Greeks is called kar' An art of ¿çoxýv, ó πointýs, a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art feigning. of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony; according to Aristotle from the word Touîv, which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes Things like things like the truth. For the fable and fiction is, as it the truth. were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem. Ib. [A] poet is a maker, as the word signifies; and he The poet who cannot make, that is, invent, has his name for nothing. is, invents. makes, that One thing to copy, another to imitate "Tis one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from nature. The copier is that servile imitator, to whom from nature. Horace gives no better a name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be a man. Raphael imitated nature. . . . There is a kind of invention in the the imitation imitation of Raphael; for, though the thing was in nature, of Raphael. yet the idea of it was his own. A kind of invention in J. DRYDEN, Dedication of the Aeneis, 1697. Why imita The imitation of nature is tion pleases. general, and indeed the only, Another reason. .. justly constituted as the rule of pleasing, both in poetry and painting. Aristotle tells us, that imitation pleases, because it affords matter for a reasoner to inquire into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness, or unlikeness, with the original; but by this rule. every speculation in nature, whose truth falls under the inquiry of a philosopher, must produce the same delight; which is not true. I should rather assign another reason. Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie, than the will can choose an apparent evil. As truth is the end of all our speculations, so the discovery of it is the pleasure of them; and since a true knowledge of nature gives us pleasure, a lively imitation of it, either in poetry or painting, must of necessity produce a much greater: for both these arts, as I said before, are not only true imitations of nature, but of the best nature, of that which is wrought up to a nobler pitch. They present us with images more perfect than the life in any individual; and we have the pleasure to see all the scattered beauties of nature united by a happy chemistry, without its deformities or faults. They are imitations of the passions, which always move, and therefore consequently please; for without motion there can be no delight, which cannot be considered but as an active passion. When we view these elevated ideas of nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure. J. DRYDEN, A Parallel of Poetry and Painting, 1695. |