The desire to escape and the desire to be lost in life were
probably never so intimately associated as they are now; and it is a
little preposterous to ask a moth fluttering round a candle-flame to see
life steadily and see it whole. We happen to have been born into an age
without perspective; hence our idolatry for the one living poet and
prose writer who has it and comes, or appears to come, from another age.
But another rhythm is possible. No doubt it would be mistaken to
consider this rhythm as in fact wholly divorced from the rhythm of
personality; it probably demands at least a minimum of personal
coherence in its possessor. For critical purposes, however, they are
distinct. This second and subsidiary rhythm is that of technical
progression. The single pursuit of even the most subordinate artistic
intention gives unity, significance, mass to a poet's work. When
Verlaine declares 'de la musique avant toute chose,' we know where we
are. And we know this not in the obvious sense of expecting his verse to
be predominantly musical; but in the more important sense of desiring to
take a man seriously who declares for anything 'avant toute chose.
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