He should hold up his magic
mirror to the physical world, some of us declare, and set the charm of
immortality upon the life about us. Far from it, others retort. The poet
should redeem us from the flesh, and show us the ideal forms of things,
which bear, it may be, very slight resemblance to their imitations in
this world.
Now while we are sadly meditating our inability to batter our way
through this obstacle to perfect clarity, the poets championing the
opposing views, like Plato's sophistic brothers, Euthydemus and
Dionysodorus, proceed to knock us from one to the other side, justifying
their self-centered verse by either theory. Do we maintain that the poet
should reflect the life about him? Then, holding the mirror up to life,
he will naturally be the central figure in the reflection. Do we
maintain that the poet should reveal an ideal world? Then, being alone
of all men transported by his vision into this ideal realm, he will have
no competitors to dispute his place as chief character.
At first thought it may have appeared obvious to us that the idealistic
poet, who claims that his art is a revelation of a transcendental
entity, is soaring to celestial realms whither his mundane personality
cannot follow.
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