“It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one’s eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.”
C'est à la fois par la poésie et à travers la poésie, par et à travers la musique, que l'âme entrevoit les splendeurs situées derrière le tombeau; et, quand un poème exquis amène les larmes au bord des yeux, ces larmes ne sont pas la preuve d'un excès de jouissance, elles sont bien plutôt le témoignage d'une mélancolie irritée, d'une postulation des nerfs, d'une nature exilée dans l'imparfait et qui voudrait s'emparer immédiatement, sur cette terre même, d'un paradis révélé.
XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," IV
L'art romantique (1869)
Original
C'est à la fois par la poésie et à travers la poésie, par et à travers la musique, que l'âme entrevoit les splendeurs situées derrière le tombeau; et, quand un poème exquis amène les larmes au bord des yeux, ces larmes ne sont pas la preuve d'un excès de jouissance, elles sont bien plutôt le témoignage d'une mélancolie irritée, d'une postulation des nerfs, d'une nature exilée dans l'imparfait et qui voudrait s'emparer immédiatement, sur cette terre même, d'un paradis révélé.
L'art romantique (1869)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb…" by Charles Baudelaire?
Charles Baudelaire 133
French poet 1821–1867Related quotes
Muriel Rukeyser
(1913–1980) poet and political activist
Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 31
Context: The meanings of poetry take their growth through the interaction of the images and the music of the poem. The music is not the rhythm, which is a representation of life, alone. The music involves the interplay of the sounds of words, the length of the sequences, the keeping and breaking of rhythms, and the repetition and variation of syllables unrhymed and rhymed. It also involves the play of ideas and images.
“Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.”
Ludwig Van Beethoven
(1770–1827) German Romantic composer
“The line is a way of thinking in poetry, by poetry.. it paces the poem.”
Edward Hirsch
(1950)
'Five points' vol 4 no 2 Georgia State University Press Winter 2000
Source: The Case for God (2009), Ch. 1 : Homo religiosus, p. 8
“The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears.”
John Vance Cheney
(1848–1922) American writer
The Century Vol. 44, Issue 4 (August 1892)
Tears (1892)
Context: Not in the time of pleasure
Hope doth set her bow;
But in the sky of sorrow,
Over the vale of woe. Through gloom and shadow look we
On beyond the years!
The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears.