POETRY AND M. MARITAIN
399
reality, less acted upon ("moins agi"); he becomes to a greater
degree a source of spontaneous activity."*
The crisis of the supernatural contains the crisis of poetry–
a crisis of its creative energies as well as of its position in society.
It, too, is "less acted upon" in the nineteenth century, not more, as
in Maritain's soul picture. But the dominant forms of social labor
are no longer moved from above at all. Human initiative, aided by
science, has become adequate to all the old tasks; and a stlrplus
of power rapidly piles technique upon technique, until every ges–
ture of production is conditioned not by the individual gift of the
craftsman but by tools and rhythms arising from other labors and
discoveries. The poet's ragged dependence upon the mysteries, far
from placing him in the center of the sources of power, now seems
to alienate him from them entirely. To the wiping out of the old
crafts, poetry had contributed nothing. Measured by what had
been .achieved and by what was promised for the future-a science
for determining the sex of children,, a pathology of rejuvenation,
mechanical chess players, trips to the moon-poetry appeared at
the dawn of the age of inventions as a stupid, feeble, egotistical,
and even monstrous survival of darker days. As Cummings was
to say a century later, poetry has "to compete" with locomotives
and electricity.
As a "profession of inspiration," poetry was thus faced with
a practical contradiction.
If
it held to inspiration in the old man–
ner, it would lag behind the productive organization of society,
lack the method of a modern profession, and, deprived of the
material and spiritual support of the community, would have to
pay itself with divine counterfeits.
If,
on the other hand, it rejected
inspiration and the unknown, it would fall from its age-old pres-
•"If
there is one truth that history has placed beyond doubt, it is that religion
embraces a smaller and smaller portion of social life. At the beginning, it covers
everything; everything social is religious; the two words are synonymous. Little by
little, the political, economic and scientific functions free themselves from the religious
!unction, set
themselvet~
apart and take on a character more and more openly temporal.
God,
if
one may so express himself, who was at first present in all human relations,
progressively withdraws from them; he leaves the world to men and their disputes. At
leut,
if
he continues to dominate it, it is from on high and from afar, and the action
which he performs, becoming more general and indeterminate, leaves more room for
the
free play of human forces. The individual feels himself to be, he is in reality, less
lldtd
upon;
he becomes to a greater degree a source of spontaneous activity. In a
word, not only does the domain of religion fail to grow at the same pace as that of
temporal life and in the same measure, but it increasingly contracts."
De La Division
du Traooil Socitd,
by Emile Durkheim. Librairie Felix Alcan, 1911.
