In the last century, when the intellectual and didactic element had
intruded to such an extent into the kingdom which belongs to
poetry, it was against the claims of the understanding that an
artist like Goethe had to protest. 'The more incomprehensible to
the understanding a poem is the better for it,' he said once,
asserting the complete supremacy of the imagination in poetry as of
reason in prose. But in this century it is rather against the
claims of the emotional faculties, the claims of mere sentiment and
feeling, that the artist must react. The simple utterance of joy
is not poetry any more than a mere personal cry of pain, and the
real experiences of the artist are always those which do not find
their direct expression but are gathered up and absorbed into some
artistic form which seems, from such real experiences, to be the
farthest removed and the most alien.
'The heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains
poetry,' says Charles Baudelaire. This too was the lesson that
Theophile Gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most
fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching -
'Everybody is affected by a sunrise or a sunset.
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