FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 77: Commencement address delivered at Simmons College, Boston.
Published in "William James and Other Essays," copyright, 1911. Printed
here by permission of The Macmillan Company.]
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE[78]
A.C. BRADLEY
The words "Poetry for poetry's sake" recall the famous phrase "Art for
Art." It is far from my purpose to examine the possible meanings of that
phrase, or all the questions it involves. I propose to state briefly
what I understand by "Poetry for poetry's sake," and then, after
guarding against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider
more fully a single problem connected with it. And I must premise,
without attempting to justify them, certain explanations. We are to
consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most
poems accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea of poetry
the metrical form, and not to regard this as a mere accident or a mere
vehicle. And, finally, poetry being poems, we are to think of a poem as
it actually exists; and, without aiming here at accuracy, we may say
that an actual poem is the succession of experiences--sounds, images,
thoughts, emotions--through which we pass when we are reading as
poetically as we can.
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