File:The appreciation of literature (1907) (14597180500).jpg

Identifier: cu31924103992628 (find matches)
Title: The appreciation of literature
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Woodberry, George Edward, 1855-1930 St. John, Cynthia Morgan, 1852-1919. fmo Schurman, Jacob Gould, 1854-1942. sgn Wordsworth Collection
Subjects: Literature
Publisher: New York, The Baker & Tayor company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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n with what is read. So long asthe bond between author and reader is a livingbond, appreciation is secure. 27 CHAPTER II LYRICAL POETRY THE lyric is primarily the expression ofemotion. In the beginning emotion wasexpressed by inarticulate cries, of which thedeveloped artistic form in civilization is puremusic. It was originally accompanied by thedance, and the literary element appears to haveentered first as a short chanted phrase in mo-notonous repetition. In the evolution of civil-ization these several elements have given riseto different arts, and the lyric now stands byitself as the expression of emotion by words,apart from the dance or music in the strict sense.It remains true, however, that the substance ofthe lyric, the essential experience w^hich it con-tains, is the emotion, and not the image setforth in words which indeed exists only to sug-gest or discharge the emotion. This is a funda-mental consideration. The emotion is seenthrobbing as it were in the image, as you may 28
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Keats Lyrical Poetry see a birds throat throb with its song; what yousee is the outward color and movement; whatyou hear is the song, that emotion which in itselfis imageless, a thing felt, not beheld. The sub-stance of meaning in the poem is the emotionroused by the suggestion of the image; andhowever personal the lyric may be, it is univer-salized and made good for all men by the emo-tion which is the same in human nature. Lyrics,strictly speaking, are symbols of universal emo-tion which is conveyed or roused by the imagery.Emotion is constant in life. It is a thing ofunrest; it rises, grows, and passes away; but itcomes again and again. Life is full of thesevague waves; and perhaps one reason why lyricpoetry holds so leading a place in literature, andis the quickest and surest appeal of the poets,is because it furnishes definite form, in thesesymbols of universal emotion, for the concen-tration and expression, under the intellectualform of an image, of that vague feeling thatfinds

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