The creation and reading of poetry in prose or verse is an achievement common to man alone of the animals. He is not separated from them by moral or intellectual faculties, for animals have these, but by his faculty to create art and make others share enjoyment of them. It may be that the spider and the bee derive aesthetic satisfaction from contemplating the web or the hive they build, or the bird gets artistic pleasure from the song it sings or hears, or any animal may win sympathy from another by some mute act, but man alone puts his emotions and ideas in words in an endurable work of art so as to relieve himself and move others. What separates man from animals is not then religion—is not the religion of a dog centered in his master as Anatole France has so quaintly shown—but the ability to create and enjoy poetry, by which I mean literature in its highest prose or verse form, music, painting and sculpture.
And a life devoted to poetry is the best life we can seek. Let a man have his necessities satisfied, and there is no higher form of life than to enjoy and if possible to create poetry. Poetry makes us want to live and gives us zest in life. Life exists for sensations and we get our sensations out of poetry. Life exists for the enjoyment
and creation of poetry. The unlettered savage has his craving for poetry satisfied in his dancing, and war cries, in religion and tribal customs. The child has it satisfied in his toys and games. Adult man appeases his hunger for poetry in diverse ways. Literature, art and music are so far the highest forms of poetry we know, and in literature I include philosophy or thought, in prose as well as verse.
Poetry acts as a necessary relief to us for emotions and ideas that seek expression, and is hence more real than any other form of life.
Our views of poetry from a psychoanalytic point of view finds confirmation even in the Bible. One of the leading prophets and the leading psalmists has each told us in scorching words how he felt before he created. Jeremiah says of God, "His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay," Ch. 20, v. 9. David also said, "My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue," Psalms, Ch. 39, v. 3. Both of these poets had made resolutions to keep silent, but could not; their choked emotions burned like fire. Their disturbed souls sought relief by expression. Thus the great prophecies and psalms had a subjective origin and a homeopathic effect upon their authors, and they have this effect on us to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[180-A] Zwei Abhandlungen uber d. Aristotleische Theorie d. Drama.
[182-A] This work has never been completely published. Dr. B. Halper, of Dropsie College, Philadelphia, has promised us a complete translation from the Arabic manuscript. There is a synopsis of it by Schreiner in the Revue des Etudes, Juives XXI, XXII.
[183-A] See Isaac Husik's Medieval Jewish Philosophy.