I best fulfil my purpose in urgently referring you to
them. I have only a single point of my own to make--a psychological
detail. One of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the
average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous.
At the bottom of that man's mind is the idea that poetry is "silly."
He also finds it exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations
against poetry can be satisfactorily answered. The charge of
silliness, of being ridiculous, however, cannot be refuted by
argument. There is no logical answer to a guffaw. This sense of the
ridiculous is merely a bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely
ridiculous. You may see it particularly in the theatre. Not the
greatest dramatist, not the greatest composer, not the greatest actor
can prevent an audience from laughing uproariously at a tragic moment
if a cat walks across the stage. But why ruin the scene by laughter?
Simply because the majority of any audience is artistically childish.
This sense of the ridiculous can only be crushed by the exercise of
moral force. It can only be cowed. If you are inclined to laugh when a
poet expresses himself more powerfully than you express yourself, when
a poet talks about feelings which are not usually mentioned in daily
papers, when a poet uses words and images which lie outside your
vocabulary and range of thought, then you had better take yourself in
hand.
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