A Defense of Poetry

I just finished reading Shelley's A Defense of Poetry (as well as its history in then Norton anthology), and I was overwhelmed with all of the wonderful quotes that pertain to our class; it is almost as if our class was based on this very piece of writing - which in a way, it probably is. All of the wonderful quotes that I furiously underlined made up the whole: Shelley's argument that the Poet and their Poetry do indeed matter, that they do indeed form the base of all things in life, of all things that we consider to be intellectual, to have meaning - the sciences, histories, philosophies, all of it is formed by the mind of the poet and the beauty of literature and the metaphors that make it up.

I found it interesting in reading the history that A Defense of Poetry was intended to be written in three different parts, but the last two were never written. I wonder what more Shelley had to argue in his short life about the importance of the arts. It is also interesting to note that this was written in 1821, yet was never published until 1840, eighteen years after Shelley had died. What a pity that he never saw this work published for the public to see, yet he probably would not have cared because of his thoughts on the work of the Poet. He argues that in the poet's lifetime, their work is not taken seriously or analyzed in the way it should be; instead, it is only in the poet's death that the work is appreciated as it should be. On one final note, I enjoyed that this piece of writing served as somewhat of a rebuttal to Plato's rigid ideas on poetry. Someone needed to stand up to that bastard.

Onto some wonderful quotations:


"In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, int he motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order, has been called taste, by modern writers."

"In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good that exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception and secondly between perception and expression."

"It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure itself."

"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life."

"All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. "The mind is it's own place and of itself we can make a heaven of a hell, a hell of heaven" (Satan's speech in Paradise Lost). But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being."

"A Poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let Time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other instituter of human life be comparable to that of a poet."

*I will have some responses to these quotes in later entries. I must go do some other reading at the moment. Hope these quotations help all who have not read this yet. Enjoy your Sunday.