"... he is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of form of exorcism of this demon. In other words again, he going to all that trouble, not in order to communicate with anyone, but to gain relief from acute discomfort; and when the words are finally arranged in the right way--or in what he comes to accept as the best arrangement he can find--he may experience a moment of exhaustion, of appeasement, of absolution of something very near annihilation, which is in itself indescribable. And he can say to the poem: 'go away! find a place for your self in a book--and don't expect me to take and further interest in you."
4 comments:
Aha, very interesting, and I found the source, to study...
Reminds me of Robert Graves:
"Poetry is not an art. It does not even begin as words. What happens is that there is a sudden meeting in the poet's mind of certain incognizable, unrelated and unpersonified forces; of which meeting comes a new creature—the still formless poem. The poet feels this happening at the back of his mind mind as an expectance, a concentration which will persist until it is removed. First, he objectifies it by writing it in in such a way that it has a general, not merely personal, context; then removes it as far as possible by putting it into circulation."
This is from 1928. Who was first?
I seem to have missed a word. It should read "a concentration which will persist uncomfortably until it is removed."
28 is before 54, so Graves is first in this case. For me there have to be words, but what do I know?
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