new thread
I read both Justin's and Luckskind's comments further down the board in the thread about the new merman picture that Luckskind has painted. It got me to thinking about a wonderful essay that Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poet from the Romantic period, wrote in 1819. He calls the essay "Defence of Poetry," but he writes comprehensively to include not only those who write poetry as poets, but many others whose work is characterized by imagination.
He places into the category of poet more than just one who writes poems. He writes: "But poets...are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful..." Who knew? Some of this ties into the longhair spirit as well, so I thought it fun to share.
In Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry,” he asserts that several qualities characterize a poet. He begins by stating that the poet “is the to poiein” (Greek) or, as Shelley explains, the thinker who is governed by the principle of synthesis, the maker. He believes that the poet has a greater sense of the ability to distinguish the “beautiful”. Shelley is placing the poet as the one who is the creator and combiner of ideas through imagination to generate art – art in the sense of anything produced through creativity. Later, he places poets as those who possess the characteristics of prophets and legislators. In all he makes the case for the poets to have been the ones responsible for founding the bases of civilization – art, law, philosophy, music, language, etc. Basically, a poet has characteristics that let him see beyond the tangible things to the intangibles, and those intangible things thus seen dive and swoop in flight within his mind to form new intangible, imaginative ideas – these ideas which form beautiful.
Shelley argues that without poets, society probably would not exist. As he says, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” in closing his essay, he implies that it is the poet who has built society, and that without the poet, society would not exist in its present form. He cites the numerous artists – Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. – that he cannot imagine a world without. Shelley also argues that the basis of “moral, political, and historical wisdom” and “scientific and economical knowledge” are based on the poet and poetry, although the relationship is not apparent. To Shelley, poetry is the foundation of the world – its Atlas.
Below is a link to the complete text. It is not an easy read, but worth it to work one's way through it.
Defence of Poetry, 1819
GASP !!
Could such deep reading possibly inhibit hair growth? HA!
We in the West are sure "Cowboy Poetry" is a higher art form....
ENJOY !
Cowboy Poetry
Thanks for linking that. I've neither yet read the work or studied Shelley at all, but I plan to do both in the near future. Your summary is excellent when put against the length and language of the original, and what wonder-worthy points it brings up that too many people today wouldn't even begin to consider.
Oh, well. Hope your studies are going well, man.
Peace
