Poetry

Use in the book

Socrates warns Hippothales not to make himself liable to all these charges through his ποίησις. He then imagines a man harmed by his own poetry and asks whether that man could count as a good poet.

The noun names the activity or medium responsible for the outcome, distinct from a particular ποίημα. The local argument tests art by consequences for its maker. It does not establish that every poem is reducible to personal advantage or that self-praise is poetry’s only possible function.

Places to read

1. 206bδιὰ τὴν ποίησιν — because of the poetry.

Use in the book

The early invitation to learn thought, morality and politics from poets makes pleasure a starting point for deeper inquiry. A later formulation calls poetry imaginary, as all the fine arts are, and reserves beauty to the idea; fantastique here does not name the modern fantasy genre. Another proposes supreme clarity as poetry’s character. The tentativeness of “Let us posit...” must remain visible beside these strong claims.

The celestial-poetry passage explicitly prefers Plato’s poetry to Homer’s for a soul approaching death. Elsewhere all beautiful poetry is likened to Homer’s. The different purposes and objects of these judgments should not be forced into one hierarchy. The genre comparison gives the ode a specially pure poetic character, while didactic, epic and dramatic forms share other offices. Poetry can also be called more philosophical than philosophy, showing that disciplinary labels and experienced qualities do not always coincide.

Places to read

1. I, p. 43, entry 1, ¶5Reading poets is proposed as a route into thought and conduct.
2. II, p. 484–485, entry 13, ¶4Poetry is imaginary in the sense of belonging to imagination.
3. II, p. 480, entry 4, ¶1Supreme clarity is proposed as poetry’s character.
4. II, p. 635, entry 1, ¶1Celestial poetry is specified through Plato rather than Homer.
5. II, p. 688, entry 3, ¶1Beautiful poetry is compared with Homer’s.
6. II, p. 732, entry 10, ¶1The ode and other genres distribute the poetic among different activities.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves poet, poetry and poetic, including the source’s historical poësie/poëte spellings in French. It does not supply the omitted genre before the orator on II.732 or verify an unstated external locus for the Socrates allusion.

Poetics

French: poétique.

Poëtique is attested with a diaeresis in the account of philosophical style: its poetics has yet to be made and has few models and no rules. The English translation renders the noun poetics, an account of stylistic principles, not poem. Philosophical style is there the art of painting bodiless objects, while philosophical genius is the eye that sees them.

Places to read: I, p. 454, entry 7, ¶1.

Improvisation

French: improvisateur.

The Italian improvisers occasion an inquiry into the riches of their language and its resources for fertility. The English translation preserves the nominal opening and the uncompleted “By what kind” formulation. The witness names a problem rather than supplying a theory of spontaneous composition or identifying particular performers; compare the distinct image of leisurely impromptus under Reverie.

Places to read: I, p. 137, entry 2, ¶1.

The didactic

French: didactique; didactiquement.

Didactic succession is the continuous form of writing for others, distinguished from the soul’s bursts, breaks and understanding at half a word. The genre fragment associates didactic poetry with the philosopher beside the lyric poet’s purer poetic function. In the historical-scene judgment, what would be worthless didactically can be beautiful because it paints a person rather than clarifies a question. The English translation keeps didactic and didactically, without equating them uniformly with dullness or identifying the scene left unnamed in the excerpt.

Places to read: I, p. 463, entry 6, ¶1; II, p. 732, entry 10, ¶1; II, p. 771, entry 6, ¶1.

Use in the book

The early declaration that he owes everything to poetry expressly refuses a narrow literary definition: there is no other word for the whole of his thoughts. Poetry preserves purity, consolation, and possible futurity within a divided self; its accumulation drop by drop precedes any promised outward work. The March 1833 attack on prescribed poetics then locates the authoritative poem outside the individual. Creation itself supplies a rule more ample than the decorated idols of art. Poetry is consequently both an inward reserve and the world's already accomplished generosity.

These affirmations do not settle Guérin's relation to vocation. In August 1833 he attempts to renounce poetry, contemplation, and ideal existence together, only to find everyday reality equally inhospitable. In January 1835 poetry becomes a person who has withdrawn: her distant voice may call him forward or say farewell. The alternatives remain undecided. Neither the early confession of debt nor the later apparent farewell should be treated as a final manifesto.

The recurrent problem is passage from felt abundance to communicable form. François can let verse flow naturally; Guérin experiences poetry that cannot find an outlet. The notebook itself nevertheless gives sustained shape to this difficulty. His accounts of failed poetic power are literary acts, but that fact need not invalidate their pain or turn them into a covert claim of triumph. Poetry names both the life he values and the unstable access he has to it.

Places to read

1. 13 August 1832 · ¶2Poetry names the whole of his thoughts and sustains a purified region of the divided soul; the future work is still conditional.
2. 21 March 1833 · ¶3Creation is offered as the divinely made poetics against restrictive artistic systems.
3. 1 August 1833 · ¶1Renunciation leaves imagination suspended between the ideal and ordinary reality, welcome in neither.
4. 26 January 1835 · ¶1Poetry withdraws as a familiar interlocutor, and mathematical certainty becomes a rival ideal.
5. 7 May 1835 · ¶1The address consoles a sufferer whose poetry has no outlet, preserving its value without demonstrating a successful work.

Translation in this edition

The supplied English distinguishes “poetics” from “poetry” in March 1833. In May 1835 “poésie sans issue” means poetry without an outlet, not simply unpublished verse; the English “poetry without outlet” should be understood in this wider inward sense.