文学专业外文翻译---诗歌的原则-其他专业.docVIP

The Poetical Principle Edgar Allan Poe, HYPERLINK /works/info/petpp.htm The Poetic Principle (B),?Home Journal, series for 1850, no. 36 (whole number 238), August 31, 1850, p. 1, cols. 1-6. IN SPEAKING of the Poetical Principle，I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetical, my principle purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightful or wrongfully, has always had it influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simple a flat contradiction in terms. I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitement are, through a psychal necessity, transient. The degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags --- fails --- a revulsion ensues --- and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such. There are, no doubt, many who have found difficult in reconciling the critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility for maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity ---