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1How they delude themselves, those who, habitually deceived, fooUshly imagine that the lofty fame of Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, ^schylus, or Sophocles and the immortality which they enjoy, belongs only to the plan of their works, to the harmony of their verse, and to the happy use of their talent! These flattering appearances which constitute the form of their poetry would have disappeared long ago, they would have become broken, like fragile vases, upon the torrent of centuries, if the intelligence which animated them had not eternalized their duration. But this secret intelligence does not reside, as certain other superficial readers persuade themselves, being still deceived, in the simple interest that the characters mise en schne inspire; this interest, which results from their contrast and from the shock of the passions, is another sort of form, more hidden, and less frail, than the former, it is true, but as variable generally and subject to the great revolution of customs, laws, and usages. True poetry does not depend upon that ; it depends upon the primordial ideas which the genius of the poet in his exaltation has seized in the intellectual nature, and which his talent has shown afterwards in the elementary nature, thus adapting the simulacra of physical things to the movement inspired by the soul, instead of adapting this movement to those same simulacra, as those who write history. This is what Bacon, the modem philosopher whom I have already cited, has felt so perfectly. ' He says :
2As the sentient world is inferior to the human soul, it is for poetry to give to this nature what reality has refused it, lending to it the faculties of the intellectual world; and as the acts and events which make the subject of true history have not that grandeur and that sublimity for which the human soul seeks, it is necessary that poetry create acts and events greater and ' De Dignit. et Increment. Scient., 1. ii., c. 13. The Essence and Form of Poetry 9 more heroic. All must be increased and embellished by its voice and receive from it a new existence ; it is necessary even that virtue shine with an eclat more pure; that the veil which covers truth be lifted from its eyes and that the course of Providence, better discerned, be allowed to penetrate into the most secret causes of events. The philosopher who expressed thus his thought regarding the essence of poetry, was far from believing, as the vulgar have always believed, and as certain modem writers have wished to convince the savants, ' that, of the two parts of poetry, the positive form might be the only genuine; that is to say, that they do not by any means consider that the human characters put upon the stage by the poets whom I have just named, were historic characters. Bacon understood well that AchiUes, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Castor and Pollux, Helen, Iphigenia, CEdipus, Phaedra, etc., are somewhat more than they appear to be, and that their virtues or their vices, their heroic actions, even their crimes, celebrated by poetry, contain a profound meaning wherein lie buried the mysteries of religion and the secrets of philosophy. '
3It belongs only to the men to whom poetry is known by its exterior forms alone and who have never penetrated as far as its essence, to imagine that a small city of Asia, unknown to all Asia, around which the King of kings of Greece waited in vain for ten years to avenge the honour of his brother betrayed by his wife, should be able during three thousand years to occupy the greatest minds of Europe, on account of a quarrel which was raised in the tenth year of the siege, between this King of kings and a petty prince of his army, angry and sulky, named Achilles. It is only permitted to the phlegmatic chronologists, whom the muses 'Leclerc, known by the multitude of his works; I'abb^ Bannier, Warburton, etc. 'De Dignit. et Increment. Sclent., 1. ii., c. 13. Court de Gobelin cites Chancellor Bacon as one of the first defenders of allegory. {Genie alleg.) 10 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1How they delude themselves, those who, habitually deceived, fooUshly imagine that the lofty fame of Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, ^schylus, or Sophocles and the immortality which they enjoy, belongs only to the plan of their works, to the harmony of their verse, and to the happy use of their talent! These flattering appearances which constitute the form of their poetry would have disappeared long ago, they would have become broken, like fragile vases, upon the torrent of centuries, if the intelligence which animated them had not eternalized their duration. But this secret intelligence does not reside, as certain other superficial readers persuade themselves, being still deceived, in the simple interest that the characters mise en schne inspire; this interest, which results from their contrast and from the shock of the passions, is another sort of form, more hidden, and less frail, than the former, it is true, but as variable generally and subject to the great revolution of customs, laws, and usages. True poetry does not depend upon that ; it depends upon the primordial ideas which the genius of the poet in his exaltation has seized in the intellectual nature, and which his talent has shown afterwards in the elementary nature, thus adapting the simulacra of physical things to the movement inspired by the soul, instead of adapting this movement to those same simulacra, as those who write history. This is what Bacon, the modem philosopher whom I have already cited, has felt so perfectly. ' He says :
2As the sentient world is inferior to the human soul, it is for poetry to give to this nature what reality has refused it, lending to it the faculties of the intellectual world; and as the acts and events which make the subject of true history have not that grandeur and that sublimity for which the human soul seeks, it is necessary that poetry create acts and events greater and ' De Dignit. et Increment. Scient., 1. ii., c. 13. The Essence and Form of Poetry 9 more heroic. All must be increased and embellished by its voice and receive from it a new existence ; it is necessary even that virtue shine with an eclat more pure; that the veil which covers truth be lifted from its eyes and that the course of Providence, better discerned, be allowed to penetrate into the most secret causes of events. The philosopher who expressed thus his thought regarding the essence of poetry, was far from believing, as the vulgar have always believed, and as certain modem writers have wished to convince the savants, ' that, of the two parts of poetry, the positive form might be the only genuine; that is to say, that they do not by any means consider that the human characters put upon the stage by the poets whom I have just named, were historic characters. Bacon understood well that AchiUes, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Castor and Pollux, Helen, Iphigenia, CEdipus, Phaedra, etc., are somewhat more than they appear to be, and that their virtues or their vices, their heroic actions, even their crimes, celebrated by poetry, contain a profound meaning wherein lie buried the mysteries of religion and the secrets of philosophy. '
3It belongs only to the men to whom poetry is known by its exterior forms alone and who have never penetrated as far as its essence, to imagine that a small city of Asia, unknown to all Asia, around which the King of kings of Greece waited in vain for ten years to avenge the honour of his brother betrayed by his wife, should be able during three thousand years to occupy the greatest minds of Europe, on account of a quarrel which was raised in the tenth year of the siege, between this King of kings and a petty prince of his army, angry and sulky, named Achilles. It is only permitted to the phlegmatic chronologists, whom the muses 'Leclerc, known by the multitude of his works; I'abb^ Bannier, Warburton, etc. 'De Dignit. et Increment. Sclent., 1. ii., c. 13. Court de Gobelin cites Chancellor Bacon as one of the first defenders of allegory. {Genie alleg.) 10 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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