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English Pages 304 [308] Year 1961
LANGUAGE and POETRY
The Charles Eliot Morton Lectures 4957-4958
LANGUAGE ana P O E T R Y Some Poets of Spain
Jorge Guillen
Harvard
University Press
Cambridge,
Massachusetts 19 6 1
© Copyright 1961 by the President All rights reserved
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PREFACE Let us not take as our point of departure "poetry," an indefinable term. Let us say "poem," as we would say "picture," "statue." All of these have one quality that immediately reassures us: they are objects, and objects that exist here and now, before our hands, our ears, our eyes. In reality, all is spirit, though inseparable from its body. And therefore a poem is language. W e could not accept this statement in reverse. If aesthetic value is inherent in all language, language is not always organized as a poem. What does the artist do to transform the words of everyday conversation into a material as suitable and genuine to him as are metal or marble to the sculptor? "Words are of no use," is the conclusion of those whose inner life is so rich and complex that they judge it to be ineffable: the experience of mysticism (San Juan de la Cruz) or the dreams of a visionary (Becquer). Others see in language a marvelous means of expression. Many writers belong to this tradition, perhaps a majority of them. (One example in Spain in recent times is Gabriel Mir