Charles Bally, Swiss linguist, makes a very virtuous reflection in his Traité de stylistique française. He is extolling the importance of the spoken language, with all its subjective burden, for literary language: he says the literary language feeds and rejuvenates the spoken language. He then says the aesthetic pleasure derived from the literary form is directly related to the spoken language, since such pleasure is nothing but the capture of a “sublime deformation” operated by the artist, which is only perceived through comparison. Bally reinforces that emotion, the quality of ideas or its organization were never enough to consecrate a literary work, not allowing us to quote a single masterpiece that obtained its consecration by abstaining from the form. Charles Bally then concludes, in other words, that the day when there is no form, and there is no contrast between the spoken language and the literary language, there will be no more literary language, and literature will be dead. Excellent, excellent! Now let us analyze the progression of poetry and prose over the centuries and draw our conclusions…
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