雪萊為詩辯護

1、A Defence of PoetryPercy Bysshe ShelleyACCORDING。one modeof regarding those two classes of mental action, which 1 are called reas on and imagi natio n, the former may be con sidered as mi nd con templati ng the relati ons borne by one thought to ano ther, however produced, and the latter, as mind ac

2、ting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light,and composing from them, as from elements, otherthoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its ownintegrity.The one is the Greek, or the principle of synthesis,and hasfor its objects those forms which are com mon to uni ve

3、rsal n ature and existenee itself; the other is the Greek, or principleof analysis,andits action regards the relations of things simply as relations;considering thoughts, not in their integralunity, but as the algebraicalreprese ntati ons which con duct to certa in gen eral results. Reas on is the e

4、numeration of qualities already known; imaginationis the perception ofthe value of those qualities, both separately and as a whole. Reas on respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.Reas on is to imag in ati on as the in strume nt to the age nt, as the body to the spirit, a

5、s the shadow to the substa nee.Poetry, in a gen eral sen se, may be defi ned to be“ the expressi on of 2the imag in ati on ” : and poetry is conn ate with the orig in of man. Man is an in strume nt over which a series of exter nal and internal impressi ons are driven, like the alternations of an eve

6、r- changing wind over an ?olian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a prin ciple withi n the huma n being, and perhaps withi n all sen tie nt bein gs, which acts otherwise tha n in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harm ony, by an internal adjustme nt

7、 of the sounds or moti ons thus excited to the impressi ons which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the moti ons of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play b

8、y itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakenedit; it will be the reflected image of that impressi on; and as the lyre trembles and sounds afte

9、r the wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause.In relation to the objects which delight a child these expressions arewhat poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages

10、what the child is to years) expresses the emoti ons produced in him by surro unding objects in a similar manner; and Ian guage and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitati on, become the image of the comb ined effect of those objects, and of his apprehe nsion of them. Man in society, with

11、 all his passi ons and his pleasures, n ext becomes the object of the passi ons and pleasures of man; an additi onal class of emoti ons produces an augme nted treasure of expressi ons; and Ian guage, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and th

12、e picture, the chisel and the statute, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its eleme nts, society results, beg in to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the s

13、eed; and equality, diversity,unity,con trast, mutual depe nden ce, become the prin ciples alone capable of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being is determ ined to action, in asmuch as he is social; and con stitute pleasure in sen satio n, virtue in sen time nt, beauty i

14、n art, truth in reas oning, and love in the in tercourse of kind. Hen ceme n, eve n in the infancy of society, observe a certa in order in their words and acti ons, disti net from that of the objects and the impressi ons represe nted by them, all expressi on being subject to the laws of that from wh

15、ich it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more gen eral con siderati ons which might invo Ive an in quiry in to the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate n atura

16、l objects, observ ing in these acti ons, as in all others, a certa in rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the comb in atio ns of Ian guage, in the series of their imitati ons of n atural

17、objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation,from which the hearer and the spectatorreceive an inten ser and purer pleasure tha n from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been calledtaste by modern writers.Every m

18、an in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances where the predominance of this faculty of approximati

19、on to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relationbetween this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Thosein whom it exists in excess are poets, in the most uni versal sense of the word; and the pleasure result ing from the manner in which they express the in flue nce of s

20、ociety or n ature upon their own min ds, com muni cates itself to others, and gathers a sort of reduplicati on from that com mun ity.Their Ianguage is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before un apprehe nded relatio ns of things and perpetuates their apprehe nsion, un til the words which r

21、eprese nt them, become, through time, sig ns for porti ons or classes of thoughts in stead of pictures of in tegralthoughts;and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganized,Ianguage will be dead to all the noblerpurposes of huma n in tercourse

22、. These similitudes or relati ons are fin ely said by Lord Bac on to be “ the same footsteps of n ature impressed upon the various subjects of the world ”1and he considers the faculty whichperceives them as the storehouse of axioms com mon to all kno wledge. In the infancy of society every author is

23、 necessarily a poet, because Ianguage itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, i n a word, the good which exists in the relatio n, subsist ing, first betwee n existe nee and percepti on, and sec on dly betwee n percepti on and expression. Every original language

24、 near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copious ness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creatio ns of poetry.But poets, or those who imag ine and express this in destructible order, a

25、re not only the authors of Ian guage and of music, of the dan ce, and architecture, and statuary, and pain ti ng: they are the in stitutors of laws, and the foun ders of civil society, and the inven tors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful an

26、d the true that partial apprehe nsion of the age ncies of the in visible world which is called religio n. Hence all origi nal religio ns are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, accordi ng to the circumsta nces of the age and nation i

27、n which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet esse ntially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, bu

28、t he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they forek now the spirit of eve nts: such is the pretence of supe

29、rstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to hisconceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and t

30、he differe nce of pers ons, and the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuringit as poetry; and the choruses of ?schylus, and the bookof Job, and Dante s “Paradise ” would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of thi

31、s essay did not forbid57citation. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still more decisive.Language, color, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which con sider

32、s the effect as a synonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of Ian guage, and especially metrical la nguage, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose thro ne is curta ined within the in visible n ature of man. And this springs from the nature i

33、tself of Ianguage, which is a more direct represe ntati on of the acti ons and passi ons of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate comb in ati ons, tha n color, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation.

34、For Ianguage is arbitrarily produced by the imag in ati on, and has relati on to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments,and conditionsof art have relations amongeach other, which limit and in terpose betwee ncon cepti on and expressi on.The former is as a mirror which reflects, the lat

35、ter as a cloud which en feebles, the light of which both are mediums of com muni cati on. Hence the fame of sculptors, pain ters, and musicia ns, although the intrin sic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed Ianguage as the hieroglyphic o

36、f their thoughts, has n ever equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term; as two performers of equal skill will produce un equal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and foun ders of religi ons, so long as their in stituti ons last, alone seems to exceed that of p

37、oets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deductthe celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually con ciliates, together with that which bel on ged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will rema in.We have thus circ

38、umscribed the word poetry within the limits of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the faculty itself. It is n ecessary, however, to make the circle still narrower, and to determine the distinctionbetween measured and unmeasuredIan guage; for the popular divisi on

39、into prose and verse is in admissible in accurate philosophy.Sounds as well as thoughts have relati on both betwee n each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relati ons has always bee n found conn ected with a percepti on of the order of the relations

40、of thoughts. Hencethe Ianguage of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the com muni catio n of its in flue nce, tha n the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order.

41、 Hence the vanity of translation;it wereas wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one Ianguage into ano ther the creati ons of a poet. The pla nt must spri ng aga in from its seed, or it will bear no flowera

42、nd this is the burden of the curseof Babel.An observati on of the regular mode of the recurre nee of harm ony in8the Ian guage of poetical min ds, together with its relati on to music, produced metre, or a certa in system of traditi onal forms of harm ony and Ianguage. Yet it is by no means essentia

43、l that a poet should accommodate his Ianguage to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is in deed convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such compositi on as in cludes much action: but every great poet must in evitably inno vat

44、e upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versificati on. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The dist inction betwee n philosophers and poets has bee n an ticipated. Plato was esse ntially a poet the truth and sple ndor of his image

45、ry, and the melody of his Ian guage, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kin dle a harm ony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to invent any regular pla n of rhythm which w

46、ould in clude, un der determ in ate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success.Lord Bac on was a poet. 2 His Ian guage has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his

47、 philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and the n bursts the circumfere nce of the reader s mi nd, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutionsin opinion are not onlyn ecessarily po

48、ets as they are inven tors, nor eve n as their words unv eil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supre

49、me poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on acco unt of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of percei ving and teach ing the truth of thi ngs, tha n those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophe

50、rs of the very loftiest power.A poemis the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There 9 is this differencebetween a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogueof detached facts, which have no other conn ecti on tha n time, place, circumsta nce, cause and effect; the other is the crea

51、ti on of acti ons accord ing to the un cha ngeable forms of huma n n ature, as existi ng in the101112mi nd of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other min ds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definiteperiod of time, and a certaincomb in atio n of eve nts which can n ever aga in r

52、ecur; the other is uni versal, and contains with in itself the germ of a relati on to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of humannature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should in vest them, augme

53、 nts that of poetry, and forever develops newand wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history;they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautif

54、ul; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.The parts of a compositi on may be poetical, without the compositi on as a whole being a poem. A sin gle sentence may be con sidered as a whole, though it maybe found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions; a sin gle wo

55、rd eve n may be a spark of in exti nguishable thought. And thus all the great historia ns, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets; and although the plan of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them from developing this faculty in its highest degree, they madecopious and ample ame nds fo

56、r their subject ion, by filli ng all the in terstices of their subjects with livi ng images.Havi ng determ ined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon society.Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive th

57、e wisdom which is mingled with its delight.In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry: for it acts in a divine and un apprehe nded manner, bey ond and above con scious ness; and it is reserved for future gen erati ons to con t

58、emplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and splendor of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impa

59、nelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many gen eratio ns. A poet is a ni ghti ngale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entran ced by the melody of an un see n musicia n, who feel that they are moved and softe ned, yet know

60、not whe nce or why. The poems of Homer and his con temporaries were the delight of infant Greece;they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeed ing civilizati on has reposed. Homer embodied the idealperfect ion of his age in huma n character; nor can we doubt