If I bid a man follow my reasoning
closely, and then say, "I am the slayer and the slain, I am the doubter
and the doubt," I puzzle his mind, and may succeed in reawakening in him
the sense he has often had come over him that we are ignorant of our own
destinies and cannot grasp the meaning of life. If I do this, nothing
can be a more legitimate opening for a poem, for it is an opening of the
reader's mind. Emerson, like many other highly organized persons, was
acquainted with the mystic mood. It was not momentary with him. It
haunted him, and he seems to have believed that the whole of poetry and
religion was contained in the mood. And no one can gainsay that this
mental condition is intimately connected with our highest feelings and
leads directly into them.
The fault with Emerson is that he stops in the ante-chamber of poetry.
He is content if he has brought us to the hypnotic point. His prologue
and overture are excellent, but where is the argument? Where is the
substantial artistic content that shall feed our souls?
The Sphinx is a fair example of an Emerson poem.
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