That artistic pleasure we get, mingled with actual pain on account of the sorrows of poets, is to us a decided part of our lives. The fact that we are brought into contact with a beautiful series of lines voicing human grief in such a manner that both our human and æsthetic emotions are aroused, is a privileged pleasure that only those who can enjoy poetry may derive.

It does not follow, however, that a man must confine himself solely to the artistic or intellectual life. To know of love only through books and not through experience is not to have lived a full life. To read the views of Aristotle on friendship and never to have had any real friendships is also but leading an incomplete life.

Literature is real and to read and write it is to live.

FOOTNOTES:

  1. The reader should also remember that such fearsome words as (1) "sex," (2) "incest," (3) "homosexualism," (4) "sadism," etc., include in psychoanalysis (1) love, (2) great affection between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, (3) intense friendship, (4) cruelty, etc., respectively.
  2. [[A]]
  3. Delusion and Dream, Moffat, Yard & Co.
  4. [[B]]
  5. There are in English but few articles applying psychoanalytic methods to writers and thinkers. Some of them are: Alfred Kuttner's "The Artist" in Seven Arts, Feb., 1917; Wilfrid Lay's "'John Barleycorn' Under Psychoanalysis," "H. G. Wells and His Mental Hinterland" and "The Marriage Ideas of H. G. Wells" in The Bookman (N. Y.), March, July and August, 1917, respectively; A. R. Chandler's "Tragic Effects in Sophocles" in "The Monist" (1913); W. J. Karpas's "Socrates in the Light of Modern Psychology" in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. 10, p. 185; and Phyllis Blanchard's "Psychoanalytic Study of Comte" in the American Journal of Psychology, April, 1918.
  6. Two indispensable articles are the summaries by Rudolph Acher and by Lucille Dooley of "Psychoanalytic Studies of Geniuses," published in German. The reader should study these articles in the American Journal of Psychology for July, 1911, and July, 1916, respectively.
  7. [[C]]
  8. Edgar Saltus has touched on the theme in a few of his novels, notably The Monster.
  9. [[D]]
  10. Among recently published posthumous poems of Swinburne is one called "Southward," written no doubt with his love still fresh in mind.
  11. [[E]]
  12. International Quarterly.
  13. [[F]]
  14. Published by the University of Pennsylvania.
  15. [[G]]
  16. He honoured Mrs. Osgood in the same way by republishing another poem from the Southern Literary Messenger of September, 1835, written for some Eliza and opening "Eliza, let thy generous heart." This poem in the poetical works of Poe bears the title, "Lines Written in an Album." It originally was written, Woodberry surmises, to his employer's daughter, Eliza White, though Whitty believes it was addressed to his future wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm. Yet it is very likely the poem was written to one of his early sweethearts, Elizabeth Herring.
  17. [[H]]

Transcriber's Notes: