"Criticism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

in. Its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound
down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. But it is not,
therefore, misunderstood- at least, not by all men is it
misunderstood. Very far from it, if indeed, there be any one circle of
thought distinctly and palpably marked out from amid the jarring and
tumultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that evergreen and
radiant Paradise which the true poet knows, and knows alone, as the
limited realm of his authority- as the circumscribed Eden of his
dreams. But a definition is a thing of words- a conception of ideas.
And thus while we readily believe that Poesy, the term, it will be
troublesome, if not impossible to define- still, with its image
vividly existing in the world, we apprehend no difficulty in so
describing Poesy, the Sentiment, as to imbue even the most obtuse
intellect with a comprehension of it sufficiently distinct for all the
purposes of practical analysis.
To look upwards from any existence, material or immaterial to its
design, is, perhaps, the most direct, and the most unerring method
of attaining a just notion of the nature of the existence itself.
Nor is the principle at fault when we turn our eyes from Nature even
to Natures God. We find certain faculties, implanted within us, and
arrive at a more plausible conception of the character and
attributes of those faculties, by considering, with what finite
judgment we possess, the intention of the Deity in so implanting
them within us, than by any actual investigation of their powers, or
any speculative deductions from their visible and material effects.
Thus, for example, we discover in all men a disposition to look with
reverence upon superiority, whether real or supposititious. In some,
this disposition is to be recognized with difficulty, and, in very
peculiar cases, we are occasionally even led to doubt its existence
altogether, until circumstances beyond the common routine bring it
accidentally into development. In others again it forms a prominent
and distinctive feature of character, and is rendered palpably evident
in its excesses. But in all human beings it is, in a greater or less
degree, finally perceptible. It has been, therefore, justly considered
a primitive sentiment. Phrenologists call it Veneration. It is,
indeed, the instinct given to man by God as security for his own
worship. And although, preserving its nature, it becomes perverted
from its principal purpose, and although swerving from that purpose,
it serves to modify the relations of human society- the relations of
father and child, of master and slave, of the ruler and the ruled- its
primitive essence is nevertheless the same, and by a reference to
primal causes, may at any moment be determined.
Very nearly akin to this feeling, and liable to the same analysis,
is the Faculty of Ideality- which is the sentiment of Poesy. This
sentiment is the sense of the beautiful, of the sublime, and of the
mystical.* Thence spring immediately admiration of the fair flowers,
the fairer forests, the bright valleys and rivers and mountains of the
Earth- and love of the gleaming stars and other burning glories of
Heaven- and, mingled up inextricably with this love and this
admiration of Heaven and of Earth, the unconquerable desire- to