[I. THE POETIC CONCEPT OR IDEA]
What in the plastic arts the sensuous visible form expressed by means of stone and colour is, or what in the realm of music animating strains of harmony and melody are, this—we must repeatedly insist on the fact—can only be, in respect to poetic expression—the idea or image itself. The force of the poet's creation centres consequently, in the fact that the art moulds a content in an ideal medium, and without bringing before us the actual forms of external Nature and the progressions of musical sound; by doing so, therefore, it translates the objective presence accepted by the other arts into an ideal form, which Spirit or intelligence expresses for the imagination under the mode which is and must remain that of our conscious life.
A distinction of this very character was already insisted on when we had occasion previously to establish a distinction between the earliest type, of poetry and its later modes of reconstruction from the data of prose.
(a) Imaginative poetry in its origin is not as yet a consciously distinct form from those extremes of ordinary conscious life, one of which brings everything to vision under the mode of immediate and therewith contingent singularity, without grasping the ideal essence implied therein, and the manifestation of the same; while the other, in one direction, differentiates concrete existence into its various characteristics, making use of abstract generalization, and in another avails itself of the scientific faculty as the correlating and connecting focus of such abstractions. The idea is only poetical in so far as it holds these extremes in unviolable mediation, and thereby is able to maintain a position of genuine stability midway between the vision of ordinary consciousness and that of abstract thought.
In general terms we may define the poetic imagination as plastic[1] in so far as it brings before our vision concrete reality rather than the abstract generalization, and in the place of contingent existence an appearance of such a kind that we recognize what is substantive immediately in it by virtue of its embodiment itself and its individuality, and as inseparable from it, and by virtue of this are able to grasp the concrete conception-of the fact in question no less than its determinate existence as one and the same vital whole reposing in the ideal medium of the imagination. In this respect we find a fundamental distinction between that whereof the plastic or constructive idea is the source and all that is otherwise made vivid to us through other means of expression. The same truth will appear to us, if we analyse what we mean, by mere reading. We understand what the letters mean, which are indicative points for articulate utterance, by the mere act of sight, and without being further obliged to listen to their sound. Only the illiterate reader will find it necessary to speak aloud the separate words that he may understand their sense. But in the case of poetry just what seems to be here the mark of stupidity is an indication of beauty and excellence. Poetry is not satisfied with an abstract effort of apprehension, nor does it bring objects before us as we find them in the form of reflection and in the unimaginative generalization of our memory. It helps us to approach the essential notion in its positive existence, the generic as clothed in its specific individuality. In the view of ordinary common sense I understand by language, both in its impression on my hearing or sight, the meaning in its immediacy, in other words, without receiving its image before the mind. The phrases, for instance, "the sun," or "in the morning," possess each of them no doubt a distinct sense; but neither the Dawn or the Sun are themselves made present to our vision. When, however, the poet says: "When now the dawning Eos soared heavenwards with rosy fingers," here without question we have the concrete fact brought home to us. The poetical expression adds, however, yet more, for it associates with the object recognized a vision of the same, or we should rather say the purely abstract relation of knowledge vanishes, and the real definition takes its place. In the same way take the phrase, "Alexander conquered the Persian empire." Here, no doubt, so far as content is concerned, we have a concrete conception; the many-sided definition of it, however, expressed here in the word "victory," is concentrated in a featureless and pure abstraction, which fails to image before us anything of the appearance and reality of the exploit accomplished by Alexander. This truth applies to every kind of similar expression. We recognize the bare fact; but it remains pale and dun, and from the point of view of individual existence undetermined and abstract. The poetic conception consequently embraces the fulness of the objective phenomenon as it essentially exists, and is able to elaborate the same united with the essential ideality of the fact in a creative totality.
What follows as a primary result of this is that it is of interest to the imagination to linger near the external characteristics of the fact, to the extent at least that it seeks to express the same in its positive reality, deems this as essentially worthy of contemplation and insists on this very attitude.
Poetry is consequently in its manner of expression descriptive Description is, however, not the right word for it. We are, in fact, accustomed to accept as descriptive, and in contrast to the abstract definition, in which a content is otherwise brought home to our intelligence, much that the poet passes by, so that from the point of view of ordinary speech poetic composition can only appear as a roundabout way and a useless superfluity. The poet must, however, manage to bring his imagination to bear upon the explication of the actual phenomenon he is attempting to depict with a vital interest.[2] In this way, for instance, Homer adds a descriptive epithet to every hero. So Achilles is the swift-footed, the Achaeans bright-greaved, Hector as of the glancing helm, Agamemnon the lord of peoples, and so forth. The name is no doubt descriptive of a personality, but the name alone brings nothing further to our vision. To have some distinct idea of this we require further attributes. We have in fact similar epithets attached by Homer to other objects, which are essential to our vision of the epic, such as sea, ships, sword and others, epithets which seize and place before us an essential quality of the particular object, depicting it more precisely, and which enable us to apprehend the fact in its concrete appearance.
Secondly, we must distinguish such reconstruction of actual facts from definition wholly imagined. This offers a further point of view for discussion. The real image merely places before us the fact in the reality it possesses. The expression of the poet's imagination, on the contrary, does not restrict itself to the object in its immediate appearance; it proceeds to depict something over and above this, by means of which the significance of the former picture is made clear to our mind. Metaphors, illustrations, similes become in this way an essential feature of poetic creation. We have thereby a kind of veil attached to the content, which concerns us, and which, by its difference from it, serves in part as an embellishment, and in part as a further unfolding of it, though it necessarily fails to be complete, for the reason that it only applies to a specific aspect of this content. The passage in which Homer compares Ajax, on his refusing to fly, to an obstinate ass is an illustration. To a pre-eminent degree oriental poetry possesses this splendour and wealth in pictorial comparisons. There are two main reasons of this. First, its symbolic point of view makes such a search for aspects of affinity inevitable, and in the universality of its centres of significance it offers a large field of concrete phenomena capable of comparison; secondly, on account of the sublimity of its predominant outlook there is a tendency to apply the entire variety of all that is most brilliant and glorious in its motley show to the embellishment of the One Supreme, which is held before the mind as the sole One to be exalted. This object of the imagination, moreover, is not to be apprehended as merely the work of fanciful caprice or comparison, possessing as such nothing in it essentially actual and present. On the contrary the transmutation of all particular existence into further existence in this central idea grasped and clothed by the imagination is rather to be understood as equivalent to the assertion that there is nothing else essentially present, nothing that otherwise can put forward a claim to substantive reality. The belief in the world as we apprehend it with the vision of ordinary common sense is converted into a belief in the imagination, for which the only world that verily exists is that which the poetic consciousness has created. Conversely we have the romantic imagination, which is ready enough to express itself in metaphor, because in its vision what is external is for the essentially secluded life of the soul only accepted as something incidental, something that is unable adequately to express its own reality. To reclothe this consequently unreal externality with profound emotion, with all the fulness of detail envisioned, or with the play of humour upon the conjunction of such opposites is an impulse, which constrains and charms romantic poetry to ever novel discoveries. The object of importance here is not so much to make the fact clear and distinct to the vision; on the contrary the metaphorical employment of these outlying phenomena is itself the aim proposed. The emotion of the poet concentrates itself as the centre, which the environment enriches with its wealth; it absorbs this as part of itself, adapts it with genius and wit to its adornment, steeps it in its own life, and finds in this movement to and fro, this elaboration and self-reflection of its creation its own source of delight.
(b) Secondly, we have the contrast present between the poetic mode of conception and that of prose. The thing of importance in the latter case is not that which is imaged, but the significance as such which constitutes the content. It is on account of the latter that the idea or image becomes a mere means to bring the content before the mind. The composition of prose is therefore neither compelled to place the more detailed reality of its objects before our vision, nor to summon before us, as is the case with the metaphorical mode of expression previously described, another idea which carries us beyond the immediate object to be expressed. No doubt it is also necessary in prose to indicate in firm and distinct outlines the positive appearance of objects; but this is so not on account of their figurative character,[3] but to meet a specific and practical purpose. Generally speaking we may therefore affirm accuracy to be from one point of view the ruling principle of prose composition, and from another a clear definition and intelligibility of statement. In contrast to this the language of metaphor and imagery is in general and relatively less clear and more inaccurate. For in that mode of direct expression, such as we have presented by our first form of the poetic conception, the fact in its simplicity is carried away from our immediate apprehension of it as a mere object into the actual world of concrete fact, and we have to recognize it as a part of this, while in that second and more oblique form some phenomenon of affinity merely and one even aloof from the essential significance of our subject is made present to us. We do not, therefore, wonder that prosaic commentators of our poets have no easy task when they seek to separate, by means of their scientific analyses, the image from the significance, to extract their abstract content from the vital form, and thereby expound poetic modes of composition to the prosaic mind.