There Is Nothing More Boring to the Modern Reader…

There is nothing more boring to the modern reader, inhabitant of the gray metropolis, than such pastoral poetry. It is impossible for him to go on for more than a few pages in this poetic genre that cannot stir anything in him. This is firstly because the modern reader lacks the experience of harmony with the environment that is indispensable to open a pastoral poem. Having been bombarded from birth with the visual aggression that is a metropolis; having always associated the common environment with danger, with the possibility of a sudden robbery, with a sense of discomfort, insecurity, and fear, he can never understand how anyone can derive satisfaction from the environment. But beyond that: his whole existence has been shaped in a rhythm completely distinct from that of the poet accustomed to the countryside, so that between them there are so few psychological and behavioral similarities that they can definitely be said to be strangers.