Poe States That the Province of a Poem Is Art Beauty Truth Reason
"True poetic form," Edward Hirsch wrote in his wonderful meditation on how to read a poem, "implies a mind so miraculously attuned and illuminated that information technology can form words, past a chain of more-than coincidences, into a living entity." James Dickey, in his guide on how to enjoy poetry, argued that "poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the earth." In his sublime Nobel Prize credence speech, the tardily and great Seamus Heaney asserted that poetry works to "persuade that vulnerable role of our consciousness" and remind us that we are "hunters and gatherers of values." But, surely, all these exaltations apply to good poetry — great poesy, even. The question, and so, is what makes great poetry, and why does it make the homo soul sing so?
Arguably the most compelling answer always given comes from Edgar Allan Poe in his essay "The Poetic Principle," which he penned at the cease of his life. It was published posthumously in 1850 and can exist found in the fantastic Library of America volume Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews (public library), which too gave us Poe's priceless praise of marginalia.
Poe begins with an unambiguous definition of the purpose of poetry:
A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the verse form is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. Just all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That caste of excitement which would entitle a poem to be and so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of whatsoever dandy length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in event, and in fact, no longer such.
And nevertheless, he argues, this isn't necessarily how we gauge poetic merit — he takes a prescient jab against our nowadays "A for effort" cultural mindset to remind us that the measure out of genius isn't dogged time investment but actual artistic quality:
Information technology is to be hoped that mutual sense, in the time to come up, will adopt deciding upon a piece of work of Fine art, rather by the impression it makes — by the result it produces — than by the time information technology took to impress the effect, or by the amount of "sustained attempt" which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one affair and genius quite some other
(Information technology's interesting that he uses the term "sustained effort" more than a century and a one-half earlier the findings of modern psychology, which has upgraded the term to "deliberate practice" to illustrate the qualitative difference in the try necessary for achieving genius-level skill.)
Subsequently discussing a couple of examples of poems that drag the soul, Poe takes a stab at what he considers to exist the most perilous cultural misconception most verse and its aim, a fallacy that profoundly betrays the poetic spirit:
It has been causeless, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, information technology is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the piece of work to be adjudged. We Americans peculiarly accept patronized this happy thought; and nosotros Bostonians, very especially, have developed it in full. We take taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would exist to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and strength: — just the elementary fact is, that, would nosotros but let ourselves to wait into our own souls nosotros should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor tin can be any piece of work more than thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and cipher more than — this poem written solely for the verse form's sake.
He goes on to outline a dispositional diagram of the human mind, a kind of conceptual phrenology that segments out the trifecta of mental faculties:
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, considering 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 and so faint a deviation that Aristotle has non 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 Censor 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 give-and-take, to Dazzler.
(I wonder whether Susan Sontag was thinking about Poe when she wrote in her diary that "intelligence … is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.")
Beauty, Poe argues, is the highest of those human being drives, and the domain where poetry dwells:
An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of human, is thus, evidently, 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 equally 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 delight.
[…]
The struggle to auscultate 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 one time to understand and to feel equally poetic.
Acknowledging that the poetic sentiment may manifest itself in forms other than poetry — art, sculpture, dance, architecture — he points to music ("Music") as an specially sublime embodiment of the Poetic Principle:
Information technology is in Music, perhaps, that the soul almost nearly attains the bang-up finish for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, information technology struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime finish is, now and then, attained in fact. We are oft made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus in that location tin be niggling dubiety that in the matrimony of Poesy with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic evolution.
(Again, I wonder whether Poe was on Susan Sontag's mind when she wrote that "music is at one time the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts," or on Edna St. Vincent Millay'south when she exclaimed, "Without music I should wish to dice. Even poetry, Sweet Patron Muse forgive me the words, is not what music is.")
Poe returns to the discipline of dazzler as the ultimate source of this "Poetic Sentiment" in all its varied expressions with an statement that rings all the more poignant and stirring today, in an age when nosotros question whether pleasance alone can make literature worthwhile. Poe writes:
That pleasure which is at in one case the most pure, the nigh elevating, and the nearly intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we lonely find it possible to reach that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Dazzler, therefore — using the discussion every bit inclusive of the sublime — I brand Dazzler the province of the verse form, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes: — no one as notwithstanding having been weak plenty to deny that the peculiar pinnacle in question is at least nigh readily attainable in the poem. Information technology by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or fifty-fifty the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: — but the true artist volition always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.
He then offers a precise, unapologetic definition of poesy:
I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Sense of taste. With the Intellect or with the Censor, it has just collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no business concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.
[…]
While [the Poetic Principle] itself is, strictly and but, the Man Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is e'er institute in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Centre — or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to drag the Soul. Love, on the contrary — Love … is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was credible before, we feel, at once, the true poetical effect — but this effect is preferable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which just served to render the harmony manifest.
Poe ends with an exquisite living manifestation of his Poetic Principle — a sort of prose poem about poetry itself:
We shall achieve, still, more immediately a distinct conception of what the truthful Verse is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical issue He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the brilliant orbs that shine in Heaven — in the volutes of the flower — in the clustering of low shrubberies — in the waving of the grain-fields — in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue distance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silverish rivers — in the repose of sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths of alone wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds — in the harp of Æolus — in the sighing of the night-current of air — in the repining voice of the woods — in the surf that complains to the shore — in the fresh jiff of the woods — in the olfactory property of the violet — in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, and cocky-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in the lustre of her eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He securely feels it in her winning endearments — in her called-for enthusiasms — in her gentle charities — in her meek and devotional endurances — but higher up all — ah, far above all — he kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty — of her love.
Observe more of Poe's timeless wisdom in Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews and complement it with his meditation on marginalia and Lou Reed on the challenge of setting Poe to music.
Source: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/28/edgar-allan-poe-poetic-principle/
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