POETRY AND M. MARITAIN
403
Maritain's second quotation, the first stanza of
Benediction,
expresses the disgrace of the profession of poetry in this "tired
world." Neither it nor ,the next specimen, the famous remarks on
the correspondence of earth with heaven, contains any hint that
Baudelaire felt that "the mysterious knowledge of poetry was
the
whirlpool, going along with him."
(Maritain's italics.) Baudelaire
says nothing of poetry "in itself"; he treats it as an instrument
"through" which the unknown is glimpsed by the soul
of the
reader,
and, most significant, he seeks, like the later pragmatists,
to demonstrate the existence of immortality by its subjective or
psychological reality, characterising it in scientific language as "a
demand of the nerves." No impressionist or Emersonian could
have expanded these texts more than Maritain, nor taken less from
them.
In Poe and Baudelaire we see already the approach to the
synthesis of inspiration and conscious method that was to result in
a separate movement in poetry. Poetry would keep its identity as
an inspired profession by seeking out the "divine manias" and
detaching their processes from the will of the other world. By
ceaseless experimentation, it would release the hidden forces from
the decaying popular orthodoxies and set them to work at man's
command. Poetry would then be no more dependent upon the
Muses or upon Grace than travel upon the good will of St. George.
One recalls Poe's challenge of method in
The Philosophy of
Composition:
"Most writers-poets in especial-prefer having it
understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy-and
ecstatic intuition.... It is my design to render it manifest that no
one point in its
[The Raven's]
composition is referable either to
accident or intuition-that the work proceeded, step by step, to its
completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathe–
matical problem."
The intention is obvious-whether or not
The Raven
was
actually so composed. Science itself should leap ahead by means
of intuition, Poe argues in
Eureka;
poetry, however, must be
shaped scientifically. "Inspiration always comes when a man
wishes,"
Baudelaire echoes from across the sea, underlining the
volition.
The first analytical step in controlling inspiration was to
re-examine all divine images and concepts in terms of their actual
