United States or Norway ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
So, crude indecency aside, what would be immoral in prose ceases to be immoral in verse, for in poetry Art follows its own code and form transcends the subject matter. That is why a great poet, Sully-Prudhomme, preferred prose to verse when he wanted to write philosophically, for he feared, on account of the superiority of form to substance in poetry, that his ideas would not be taken seriously.
Moreover, he respects the limits of his art; for while his friend and contemporary, M. Sully-Prudhomme, goes astray habitually into philosophical speculation, and his immortal senior, Victor Hugo, often declaims, if one may venture to say so, in a manner which is tedious, Coppee sticks rigorously to what may be called the proper regions of poetry.
In the last analysis nothing is too sublime or too beautiful to be entirely possible. Its attainment is simply a question of conditions. These conditions lie in entering into this inner realm of spiritual energy in which the personal will is increasingly identified with the will of God. Like an echo of celestial music are these lines by Sully-Prudhomme:
Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme: Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss, Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss. One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one it is the kiss.
Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme: Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss, Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss. One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one it is the kiss.
The leading poets are the song-writer Beranger, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset. With the close of the first half-century romanticism began to give way before realism, from which, however, there was a reaction before the century closed. Among the greater poets are Sully-Prudhomme and Coppee; among the novelists, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, and Bourget.
Large women, breathless and heavily perspiring, declaimed in an apocalyptic tone verses of Sully-Prudhomme or Auguste Dorchain. A famous actor solemnly recited a Mystic Ballad to the accompaniment of an American organ. Words and music were so stupid that they turned Christophe sick. But the Roman women were delighted, and laughed heartily to show their magnificent teeth.
Sheer experience had already taught her that in some circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, "You shall be born," particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers.
Word Of The Day