"Essays 2nd Series" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which
reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether
they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically,
Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and
the Son; but which we will call here, the Knower, the Doer, and the
Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love
of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is
that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or
analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent
in him, and his own patent.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is
a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted,
or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made
some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.
Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in
his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism,
which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of
all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact,
that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world
to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose
province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But
Homer's words are as costly and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's
victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or
the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes
primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though
primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as
sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who
bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are
so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the
air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write
them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and
substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men
of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and
these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.
For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is
reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known.
Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy.
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces
that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows
and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and
privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of
ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not
speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in
metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the other