Introduction: ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL THEORIES Ie isthe mark of an eduested man to look for precision in each class of things ature of the subject admit Aniston, Nicomachean Esher 10 Pos AND ANSWER aesthetic questions in terms of the relation of art to the artist, rather than to external nature, of to the audience, or to the internal requirements of the work itself, was the characteristic tendency ‘of modern criticism up to a few decades ago, and it continues to be the of a great many—perhaps the majority—of critics today. This point of view is very young measured against the twenty-fivehundred- year history of the Western theory of art, for its emergence as a compre- hensive approach to ar ber of critics, dates back not ‘The intention of this book is to ry) the triumph, the analysis, the evaluat of aesthetics presents ficult problem to the his profess that much, if not wavering, chaotic, phantasmal. of the philosophy of art’ seemed to Santayana who himself wrote two excellent books on the a4 one ORIENTATION OP RITICAL THEORIES 5 lds into the proper: subject, commented that traditional aesthetics science or pseudo-philosophy.” fact only a pseudo- scope, precision, and coherence of the insi ties of single works of art and the adequacy with diverse kinds of art. Such a criterion wi umber of valid theories, and relatively adequate to the range of aes sity is not to be deplored. One lesson we of ert fact, is of the past. Contrary to Prall’s pessim been futile, but as working conceptions of the m: of art, have been greatly effective in shaping Even an aesthetic philosophy so abstract ly Kant can be shown to have modified the work of poets. In modern t new departures in literature almost invariably have been accompanied novel critical pronouncements, whose very inadequacies sometimes hel form the characteristic qualities of the correlated literary achievements, s0 that if our had not disagreed so violently, our artistic inhes Richards himself went on nin the science of pay: to attempt a solid grounding of literary evaluat true that the course of ae sory displays its fu measure of the at really matter. 1a good deal of our impatience with 1 diversity and seeming chaos losophies of at is rooted in a demand cost of overlooking many sequences of 4 psychological, peal to the facts, any aim, however, is is art? or ‘What is poetry?" disagree. The fact cannot readily be compared at all, because they lack a comm Which to meet and clash. They seem incommensurable because stated in it purports to discover is a source ofits value to the amateur of art, for it may open his senses to aspects of a work which other theories, with 2 different focus and different categories of discrimination, have on principle over looked, underestimated, or obscured. of aesthetic theor the future by reference to the past, to justify, order, and clarify 0 ms with diverse facts themselves, And as we shall see, these fats turn out to have the curious ems of thought reprehensible property of being conspicuously tions and procedure. As a result it is hard to find disagree, or even, what the points at iss nature of 1 very principles which appeal to them for Because many critical statements of fact are thus pa Perspective of the theory within which they occur, they are not ‘tr roach the ideal of being verifiable by any hope, without undue violence to ts as possible xible enough 30 1 ranslate as many expect in the exact sciences is doomed to disappoint ‘A good critical theory, nevertheless, has criterion is not the scientific verifability of base terms fal theory nt thei vn favorte phlsophi we y. The ber this procedure endl irs sbjet man, and merely 1 butte scoped betra¥Sed Ths sets oe weed win single proposan analytic scheme which avoids imposing its own philosophy, by utilizing those key distinctions which are already common to the largest pos umber ofthe theories to be compared, and then to app in constant readiness to introduce such further distinctions as seem to be needed for the purpose in hand. i. Some Co-ordinates of Art Criticism Four elements in the total situa and made al a of a work of art are discriminated it by one or another synonym, in almost all theories which aim to be comprehensive. First, there is the work, the artistic produc ise And since this is a human product, an artifact, the second common element is the artifice, the artist. Third, the work is taken to have a subject which, directly or deviously, is derived from existing things—to be about, or signify, ag which either is, or bears some relation to, an object state of affairs. This third element, whether held to consist of peopl actions, ideas and fe sences, has freque ly been denoted by that word-ofa Tec us use the more neucral and comprehensive term, universe the final element we have the audience: the to whom the work is addressed, or to whose a available, (On this framework of a nets, spectators, or readers at any rate, it becomes work, universe, and audience I wish to spread ‘out various theories for comparison. To emphasize the artificiality of the device, and at the same time make it easier to visualize the analyses, et us arrange the four co-ordinates in a convenient pattern. At do, with the work of art, the thing to be expl the center UNIVERSE t WORK 4 ™ ARTIST AUDIENCE ingle wi Although any reasonably adequate theory takes some account of all four clements, almost all theories, as we shal ica disc toward one only. That tends to derive from one of these terms his principal categories for defining, classifying, and analyzing a work of art, as well as the major criteria by which he judges its value. Application of this analytic scheme, therefore, will sort attempts to explain the nature and worth of a work of art into four broad classes. ‘work of art principally by cence, or the artist. The fourth lation, as an autonomous whole, whose significance and value are determined ‘withour any reference beyond itself. ‘To find the major orientation of a critical ory, however, is only the hese four co-ordinates are beginning of an adequate analysis. For one thing, th rot constants, but variables; they differ in significance according to the theory in which they oscar. Take what Ihave called he amie a ample. Tn any one theory, the aspects of nature which an artist is said to ts te, may be either particulars or types, and or the moral aspects of the world, or else any 3's world they may be safer Wa m. may be eaciained that dhe I ar of gine lao, or ef conaon sane or of netial leer eh weil no be bd cedar lake poy wien chimeras, tad Plone Idan. Conseuen, thas which age in ang of art may vary from recomm the most remote idealism, Each of our other terms, as we shall see, aso se theories are ft would be poss which, even in a preliminary clas differentie, however, we shar discriminate at the expense make broad initial generaliza important virtue, that te which most early nineteenth-cen rt to explain the been instructed to speak recourse t0 the amid varietytt, Mimetic Theories onthe explanation of at as essentially an ii of aspects of the universe—was probably the mos primitive aesthetic theory, but mimesis is no simple concept by the time it make pearance in the dialogues of Plato. The ats of pai ing, and sculpture, Socrates says, ae all imitations‘ term, signifying two items and some correspondence between them, But although in many later two categories the imitable and the imitation, the philosopher in the Platonic thee categories. The frst category eas; the second, reflecting this isthe and the third category, in urn reflecting 8 such things as shadows, images in water and mirrors, is that of the eternal and uneh: world of sense, natural or ar the second, com, and the fine arts, Around this three-stage regress—complicated still further by ¥. plementary distinctions, as well as by his expl his key terms—Plato weaves his dazz! arguments emerges a recurrent pattern, exemplified in the famous passage in the tenth book of the Republic. In discussing the nature of art, Socrates ‘makes the point chat there are three beds: the Idea which ‘is the essence of the bed’ and is made by God, the bed made by the carpenter, and the bed found in & pai of this third bed? 1 think, he said, that we may faely designate him as the Which the others make. tor of that in the descent from nature an ly, he sad, And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefor is thrice removed from the king and foo ‘That appears to be so.* all other imitators, he we eeath? From the initial position art imitates the world of appearance and lows that works of art have a lowly status in the order of existing things. Furthermore, since the realm of Ideas is the ultimate locus not only of reality but of value, the determination that a move from the truth auc the beautiful and good, Des is at second re- ial remoteness from the elaborate dialectic—or more accurately, sanernte Tiron 9 by means of it—Plato's remains a philosophy of a single standard; for things, including art, are ultimately judged by the one criterion of their relation to the same Ideas. On these grounds, the poet is inescapably the competitor of the artisan, the lawmaker, and the mora of these can be regarded as himself the truer poet, success ion of the Ideas which the traditional poet attempts ui lure, Thus the lawmaker is able to reply to tl "Best of strangers— dooming him wo § seeking admission to his ci we also according to our ability ate tragic poets and our tragedy is the best and noblest; for our whole state isan imitation of the best and nobles life, which we alfirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets rivals and antagonist in the noblest of dramas. . 7 And te poor opinion of orinary poet has of ke mimetic character, i teely conned the it efec on ts autre ae bad beau ic represents appearance than teath, and ours thir flings ether tan the exons or by the the pet compan (ts Sorte okay poor ota and one iss ing of the social state and the state of so that the question of art can never be separated from questions of truth, justice, and virtue. "For geeat is the issue at stake,’ Socrates says in concl ‘greater than appears, wl be good o bad: Aristotle in the Poetics also defines poetry as in Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute ogues, the jr that a work of at is constructed according to prior models in 1 but since Aristotle has shorn away the nature criterion-Ldeas, there is no longer anything invidious istherefore, is not only < lity, but also of ry, and of each kind of poem by appropriate to its lar nature. As a resule of this procedure, Aristotle bequeathed an arsenal of instruments for technical analysis of poetic forms and their ele ents which have proved indispensable to critics ever since, however diverse the uses to which these instruments have been pul FY a8 pe Poetics is the way it considers a work of art in fording each its due functi uses’ of the work. This procedure results in a scope and flexibility that ‘makes the treatise resist a ready clasification into any one kind of orienta \n. Tragedy cannot be fully defined, for example, nor can the total deter derstood, without taking into a rement of the specifically “tragic rent, however, that the pt—the reference of a work to the subject matter whi rimary in Aristotle's critical system, even if i is primus inter pores. Their character as an imitation of human actions is what defines the arts in general, and the kind of action imitated serves as one important dif- ferentia of an artistic species. The historical genesis of art is traced to the natural human instinct for imi pleasure in sec as one of of its construction be Even t to any work of ion is always of one thing’ and in jon of action, must represent one action, a id the ‘form’ of a work, the presi s imitated, the necessary demands of the product that aspect of a poem, he does not assign a determi cfient cause, the agent things and imposes it u feelings, or desires are not called on to exp of a poem. divergence of comic from se toward the construction of poet is considered from the poets make a personal appearance extravagant courtesy, from the ideal Republ somewhat greater number are admitted to the seconel-best state of 1 Poetics, fact. The systematic importance tone of those p all faced in the sar ilerences they might imply, representation,’ ‘counterfeiting feigning, ‘copy,’ or ‘imag ‘Through most of the eighteenth century, the tenet that artis an imitation id Hurd said Poetry, toa point authorities and the Greek erities (if for so pl uit of universal being. * Eve iginal ge the seco found that a work of genius was no lest ani being an origina ‘Insitations! Young wrote in his Conjectures on Original Composition, ‘are cof two kinds: one of nature, one of authors. The first we call Originals of scientific investigator Later the Reverend J. Moir, an ex poetry, conceived genius to lie i for originality in 's conception of mimesis, exc will be better to cite a few eighteenth: are of special interest. My fist example ae Arte réduits un ad immense in- Baueux a single who assemble exper im which reduces them to a p focedure "to be to me to open A revelation; one other established fo everyday umination — which the Greek philosopher f crude formed denaene zones 3 by assembling traits taken from individual things to compose a model pot eux and with great show of rigor, to extract one by one the rules of taste—both the general rues for poetry and painting and the detailed Next to this classic instance of a priori and deduct a German document, Lessing's Laokoon, pul acceptance of Simonides’ maxim that ‘painting is dumb poetry and poetry 4 speaking painting.’ His own procedure, he promises, will be continual to test abstract theory agaist ‘the individual instance’ Repeatedly he decides ance on deduction. ‘We Geemans have no lack of systematic books. We are the mest expert of any nation in the world at deducing, from a few given verbal explanations, and in the most beautiful order, anything whatever that we wish’ ‘How many things would prove incontestable in theory, had not genius succeeded in proving the contrary in fact” Lessing's intention, then, i to extal principles by an inductive logic which is deliberately opposed to the procedure of Bateux Nevertheless, lke Batteus, Lessing concludes th no less than paint ing, is imitation, The diversity berween these arts follows from their i ference in medium, which imposes necesary differences in the objects each though poctry consists ofa sequence of articu- sounds in time rather than of forms and colors fixed in space, and wough, instead of being limited, like painting, to a static but pregnant mom isthe reproduction of progressive action, Lessing reiterates for ite sandard formula: "Nachahrmung’ is stil forthe poet the attribute ‘which constitutes the exence of his art! AAs the century drew on, various English crtes began to scrutinize the concept of imitation very closely, and they ended by finding (Aristotle to differences in medium between the arts were such as to ed umber from being classed as mimetic, in any trend may be indicated by a few examples. In 1744 James urse on Music, Painting, and Poetry,’ Il three arts "They agree, by being al strict sense, TI maintained, in ‘A Di ion was common to% in those instance: 1789, in two closely reasoned dissertations prefixed to his Poetics, Thomas Twining confirmed jon between arts whose media a n the later terminology of the Chicago semiotician, Charles Morris), in that they resemble what they denote, and those which are si y convention. Only works ia which the resemblance between copy and object is both ‘immediate’ and ‘obvi ccan be described as imitative in a strict sense. Dram: jn which we mimic speech by speech, is the only kind of poetry which is properly imitation; music must be struck from the list of imitative arts; sculpture, and the arts of design usly and esentially imi n, played an important pat shows in most theories, play the dominant part, Art, it was commonly si tation—but an imitation which instrumental toward prov audience. In netr-unanimit lauded and echoed Aristotle's Poeticr is dece shifted, and, on our diagram, this later c from work to universe, but from work to {quences of this change of direction is clearly indicated by the first classic of English criticism, written sometime in the early 1560s, Sir PI The Apologie for Poctry i dis .? Twining says, ic poetry, therefore, iii, Pragmatic Theories Poesy therefore [said Sidney] is an ance of i that is to say, a represen 2 speaking not an Aristotelian formulation, eto achieve certain effects To Sidney, poetry, by def jn an audience, Ie imi and pleases, it wsns out, ight poets ate those ultimate end of teaching; ight and teach, and delight objects of poet is distinguished the historian by his ea since he couples example’ of tices even ‘harde while by 1 of Cherries” T point of view of disgui suited to achieve: poetry because the basis of successive 's Poctie, For convenience we may name toward the audience, a ‘pragmatic theory,’ chiefly as a means to an value according to its succes he greatest variance in emphasis tendency of the pragmatic eri ade in order to effect re poems in large part on the spec! ‘competent to achieve; and6 o achieving persuasion in an audience, and most theorists agreed with Cicero that in order to persuade, the orator must conciliate inform, and move the minds of his auditors." The great classical exemplar of the application of the rhetorical point of view to poetry was, of course, the Art Poetice of Horace. As Richard McKeon points out, ‘Horace’ criticism is directed the main to instruct the poet how to keep his audience in their seats unt the end, how to induce cheers and applause, how to please a Roman audi ence, and by the same token, how to please all audiences and win imm« In what became for later critics the focal passage of the Ars Poetica, Horace advised that ‘the poet's aim is either to profit orto please, or to blend jn one the delightful and the useful’ The context shows that Horace held pleasure to be the chief purpose of poetry, for he recommends the profitable merely as a means to give pleasure to the elders, who, in contrast to the young aristocrats ‘rail at what contains no serviceable leon.’ But prodesse delectare, to teach and to pleas, together with rm introduced from rhetoric, movere, to move, served for centuries to collect under three heads the sur of aesthetic effets on the reader. The balance between these terms altered in the course of time, To the overwhelming majority of Renais- s, a8 to Sir Philip Sidney, the moral effect was the terminal ai other Looking upon a poem as a ‘making,’ a contrivance typical pragmatic engrossed with formulating t ds —the ‘skill, o Crafte of making’ as Ben Jonson called it—for achieving the elfecs desired. These methods, traditionally comprehended un pesis, or ‘at’ (in phrases such as ‘the art of poetry"), are formulated as precepts and rules whose warrant consists either in their being derived from the qualities of works whose success and long survival have proved t adaptation to human nature, or else in their being grounded directly on the psychological laws governing the responses of men in general. The rules, therefore, are inherent qualities of each excelent work of art, and when excerpted and codified these rules serve equally to guide the artist in ‘making and the crities in judging any future product Dr. father of ism, as ne upon principles the merit of com- aaoaaTic THEORIES 1” ishing those dng, has an end, wh les was to point thae imitation ‘out rules there can be no art, any more to conduet you into ite Emphasis on the rules and maxims of an artis native to all criticism that ‘grounds itself in the demands of an audience, an« ‘magazines and manuals devoted to teaching fle stories that sell’ But rulebooks based o1 of the madera buying public are of subuly rat carly part of the eighteenth century trained taste and expert connoisseurship of a whether these were Horace’s Roman contempor theory, the voices even of the best comtemporary judges were to the voice of the ages. Some neoclasic critics were al rules of ar, derived, were ultimately ¥ forming to that objec 1 of norms whose existence gi rational order and of Nature’ must demonstrate the same properties. ‘The renowned masters among the ancients wrote not to pleare a ous transitory Assembly, or a Handful of Men, who were 'd their Countrymen; They wrote to their to all Countries Ages... They were el could transmit their Immortal Works to Post monious Order which maintains the Universe Although they disagreed concerin English critics repudiated such formal French rz and place, and the purity of comedy and tragedy, among eighteen versal rules, At about mid-century, unity of time but a few ecc became popular to demonstrate andAccordingly, Johnson discriminates those elements in Shakespeare's plays ther which were introduced to appeal to the local and lence of his own time (‘He knew,’ said Johnson from those elements which are proportioned to the nee in works 0 other test can be applied chan Shakespeare's long survival ad without any other reason than the desire for pleasure’ is the excellence. The reason for this survival Jonson wothing can please man ns of general ni kespeare exhi joved by ‘those general passion ‘minds are agitated’ Thus Shakespeare's excellence in holding up the mirror to general nature turns ou justified by the superior st part the two principles co-operate toward a sature of the universe the change of scene ‘wa “received a8 teve even by those justice isa virtue independant on time or place. haracter the audi- 1 pragmatic orientation, ordering the aim of the artist and fof the work to the nature, the needs, and the springs of pl ence, characterized by far the greatest part of criticism from the time of Horace through the eighteenth century. Measured either by its duration or the number of its adherents, therefore, the pragmatic view, broadly con- ceived, has been the principal aesthetic in this system were the ele had bequeathed to criticism not only ing the audience but also (since its main concern was with educating the orator) attention to the powers and activities of the speaker himself— innate powers and genius, as process of inven course" In the course of time, and particularly after the psychological con tributions of Hobbes and Locke in the seventeenth ce tion was given to the mental constitution ofthe poet, the quality and degree of his ‘genius’ and the play of his faculties in the act of composition. Through most of the eighteenth century, the poets invention and imag ration were made thoroughly dependent for their materials—their ideas and ‘images'—on the external universe and the literary models the poet had to imitates while the persistent stess laid on his need for judgment and art— the mental surrogates, in effect, of the requirements of a cultivated audience —held the poet strictly responsible to the audience for whose pleasure he ‘exerted his creative ability. Gradually, however, the srs and more to the poet’s natural genius, creative imagination, and emotional spontancity atthe expense of the opposing attributes of judgmer and artful restraints, As a result the audience gradually receded into the back- ‘ground, giving place to the poet himself, and his own mental powers and ‘emotional needs, as the predominant cause and even the end and test of ar. iv. Expressive Theories Wordsworth announced in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads of 100, “is the spontaneous overfow of powerful feelings!’ He thought we enough of this formulation to use it ewice in the same essay, and on thi subjects, language, sament from work to poet. Poetry is the overflow, utterance, of projectionof the thought and fee the poet; or else (in the chief variant formu- ing the date at w this point of view became predominant in c theory, like marl at which orange becomes yellow in the rary procedure. As we shall see, though isolated scope, is to be found as early as Longin ts main sources in the thought a emotions of the speaker; a variant form in Bacon's brief analysis of poetry as per- ing to the imagination and ‘accommodating th lesires of the mind Even Wordsworth’ theory, it more embedded in a traditional mati therefore, les radi ‘The year 1800 is a good round number, however, a convenient document, by which to signa mimetic and pragmatic by the expressive view of art In general terms, the central tendency of I appear, is much ‘emphases, and is, summarized in this way: A work of artis essen ing, though nary source and subject matter of a poem, therefore, of the poet’s own mind; or if aspects of the external world, then these only as they are converted from fact to poetry by the fe of the poe’s mind. (‘Thus the Po- etry «2 Wordsworth wrote, ‘proceeds 1 do, from the soul of Man, communic: he exter- nal world’) ® The para cause, deter audience; but instead an efi ings and desires seeking expres nation which, like God the creator, has its internal source propensity is to grade the arts by the extent to to the undistorted expres st, and to classify the species of an motion. The ir media are amen. igs oF mental powers of the evaluate their instances, by 10 of the feel the qualities or states of mind of which they are a stituting a poem, the clement the actual x to be regarded as pri ‘mirror held up expressive Wordsworth in the great commonplaces of (0) The poetic kinds. Mill ing cither by the poet or by onenot poetry at a greatest divers inely poctic passages; while th izes rude stages of gen. plot and story ‘merely as a story’ (2) Spontancity as erterion, Mill accepts the venerable assumption th n's emotional susceptibility is innate, but his knowledge and skill— are acquired. On this basi ‘unconscious irony overflow of feel even of the appear overflows, 's theory, excep severed from the extern jects signified by a poem egarded as not the mete power of prodi termed descriptive poctey state of human rather vapid the power of ere as tobe the h a force not expresses, to work upon the feeling of another —hen the expression of pose, by tha des to be poetry, and becomes eloquence: There point of view. Or, the disappearance of a homogeneous and dis king an impression casesFECTIVE THEORIES ” ed the importance of the chosen to discuss Arist = Wordsworth sill, ut for Men,’ and observed effect of purgi assimilates these external ele xd by the poct in ad- centripetal ver wrote one single line tragedy a8 an obje ted re-enter the discussion as melody, P the actions rkness and sings to cheer its own character, anced by the melody make 1 poet utterly replaces the audi- idered as 1 pleasures characteristic of comedy and other fo itself can now be analyze i; and ects an orbit for tragic sgrated by the internal to poetry, the objective orienta erge in the late eighteenth and poem as a heterocos h we are bora, zh the degree of homage his reader's piety a 0. Objective Theories ints are discriminated he artist, or the world led together by An's Sake’ And with ive and rary sis of an art form which is both obje. 1¢ central portion of Aristotle's Poctcs. I have8 OMENTATION OF RETICAL THtEonIss But be’ The subtle and incisive cx Avistotlians and theie advocacy of an inst poetry as such have been largely effective toward a eal criticism, John Crowe Ransom has been calling for recognition of autonomy of the work itself as existing for * campaigns have been organized against ‘the personal heresy, ‘the intentional fallacy; and ‘the affective fallacy’; the widely influential handbook, The Theory of Literature, writen by René Wellek and Austia Warren, proposes that criti cism deal with a poem gua poe factors; and similar views are being expressed, with increasing frequency, not only in our literary but in our scholarly journals. In America, at least, some form af the objective point of view has already gone far to displace its rivals as the reigning mode of literary cxticism, ‘According to our scheme of analysis, then, there have been four major crientations each one of which has seemed to various acute minds adequate for a suisactory cri by and large the histori progression, From the beginning through the early nineteenth century, has been from the mimetic theory of Plato and (in a qualified fashion) Avis- toile, through the pragmatic theory, lasting from the conflation of rhetoric ch poetic ia the Hellenistic and Roman era centh century, to the expresive theory of Eng German) romantic criticism. (Of course romantic criticism, like jam of art in general. At reason and, as-an eternal ‘poetry is, as was said more than two thou sand years ago, imi ween the arts on the basis i diverse media a Then, in an essay packed th eighteenth-century catch-lines, he ungratefully employs ul fy his elev Wordsworth, and Coleridge over ury poets because they imitate nature more acc in the nature of ion of Scot to make mode of criticism which subjects art and the artist to the audience also eon ed to flourish, usually in a vulgarized form, among influential jour- such as Francis Jeffrey, who deliberately set themselves to voice the sary standards of the middle class and ro preserve unsulled what Jefrey led ‘Ke purity of the female charact But these are not the innovative critical writings which contributed to coayscrive rites the predominant temper of what Shelley, in his ‘Defence of Posty? “the aprtof the age’; and the radial diference berween the character points of view of neo-lassc and romantic ericism re Take such representative productions of the 1760s and ‘7's as Johnson's Prejace 10 Shakespeare, Kames's Elements of Criticism, Richard Hu ‘On the Idea of Universal Poetry’ The Art of Poetry on a New Plan dubious authorship), Best's Extaye on Poctry and Music, and the cight Discoures of Sit Joshua Reynolds, Place these next to the major nquires ito poetey and art of the romantic generation: Wordsworth’s Prefaces and collateral essays, Coleridge’ Biogrephia Litera and Shake "On Poetry in General” and other essay tthe methodologies and doctrinal diferences which within a single group, one decisive change marks off the eri the Age of Johnson, The poet has moved into the center of the ertical system and taken over many of the preroga- tives which had once been exercised by his readers, the nature of the world in which he found himself, and the inherited precepts and examples of his poetic art