More curious than examples like Baudelaire’s, who found his aesthetic theory essay already described and practiced elsewhere, is to come across authors, coeval or not, who are similar in content and form, although they are unknown to each other. There are many examples of this, and they attest to the fact that authentic literary manifestation is more of an instinctive impulse, more associated with the particularities of experience than with proper literary study.
Tag: literature
Poetry Is Not Enough on Its Own
Poetry, as Guyau suggests, is not enough on its own and, if it is great, it is the form that creates an even greater motivation. This is why, in short, the value of art is tied to the value of artistic motivation. The choice of poetic form is the desire to record in the most difficult and superior of literary forms what is sincerely and violently manifested in the innermost being: it is, in short, the appreciation of this singular manifestation.
The Classic, Most Frequent and Most Shared Drama…
The classic, most frequent and most shared drama among writers is the desperate longing for freedom, which is hindered by the impossibility of achieving it through writing. That is to say: the awareness of the sense of mission, the burning desire to achieve it, but the natural and characteristic obstacle of the profession, which can only be exercised with complete dedication with a lot of luck or hard work. There is no escaping this fate, but perhaps thanks to it, writing still endures today as an authentic vocation.
The History of Literature Resembles a Pendulum
The history of literature resembles a pendulum that sometimes swings towards the new and sometimes back towards the old. The first movement is preceded by boredom with the old forms, the old models and the old rules, while the second occurs after realizing that the new creation is worse than the old practice, which now seems as beautiful and rich as ever. In both impulses, there is something sincere and something unreasonable. Literature is always renewed and, if great, it is never created from scratch.