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Untitled Article
oForatory , not poetry . The like may be said of that most moving prayer in Beethoven ' s ' Fidelio * — 4 Komm , Hoffnung-, lass das letztfc Stern Der Miide nicht erbleichen :
in which Madame Devrient , last summer , exhibited such consummate powers of pathetic expression . How different from Winter ' s beautiful * Paga pii , ' the very soul of melancholy exhaling itself in solitude ; fuller of meaning , and , therefore , more profoundly poetical than the words for which it was composedfor it seems to express not simple melancholy , but the melancholy of remorse .
If , from vocal music , we now pass to instrumental , we may have a specimen of musical oratory in any fine military symphony or march : while the poetry of music seems to have attained its consummation in Beethoven ' s Overture to Egrnont . We question whether so deep an expression of mixed grandeur and melancholy was ever in any other instance produced by mere sounds .
In the arts which speak to the eye , the same distinctions will be found to hold ., not only between poetry and oratory , but between poetry , oratory , narrative , and simple imitation or description . Pure descri ption is exemplified in a mere portrait or a mere landscape—productions of art , it is true , bat of the mechanical rather than of the fine arts , being works of simple imitation , not creation . We say , a mere portrait , or a mere landscape , because
it is possible for a portrait or a landscape , without ceasing to be such , to be also a picture . A portrait by Lawrence , or one of Turner ' s views , is not a mere copy from nature : the one combines with the given features that particular expression ( among all good and pleasing ones ) which those features are most capable
of wearing , and which , therefore , in combination with them , is capable of producing the greatest positive beauty . Turner , again , unites the objects of the given landscape with whatever sky , and whatever light and shade , enable those particular objects to impress the imagination most strongly . In both , there is creative art—not working after an actual model , but realizing an idea .
Whatever in painting or sculpture expresses human feeling , or character , which is only a certain state of feeling grown habitual , may be called , according to circumstances , the poetry or the eloquence of the painter ' s or the sculptor ' s art ; the poetry , if the feeling declares itself by such signs as escape from us when we are unconscious of being seen ; the oratory , if the signs are those
we use for the purpose of voluntary communication . The poetry of painting seems to be carried to its highest perfection in the Peasant Girl of Rembrandt , or in any Madoinaor Magdalen of Guido ; that of sculpture , in almost any of the Greek statues of the gods ; not considering these in respect to the mere F 2
Untitled Article
What is Poetry ? 67
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 67, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/67/
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