406
PARTISAN REVIEW
It means being tempted by the absolute of poetry: "how can we
better define this descent into the lived-in subject, which is the
poetic knowledge?"
Maritain recurs to the argument that modern art has volun–
tarily taken too much upon itself. The device for showing this is to
characterise poetry with a phrase like "poetic knowledge" and
then to treat this as synonymous (consubstantial?) with the "abso–
lute," the "whole of man," the "whole world," "all the treasures
of spirit," "absolute life," "the burden of humanity"-a
trompe
l'oeil
of concepts that ranks with Dali's multiple images. Having
attributed these excessive motives to Rimbaud, Maritain need not
condemn his heretical investigations openly from the point of
view of the Church but may attack them seemingly in the interests
of art itself.
Besides the phrase "I is another," Maritain quotes from the
second of the
Lettres du Voytmt
in ·which Rimbaud outlined his
scheme of the poet as a "seer." Re-examining these paragraphs,
from whose depths so many mystifications have been fished up, we
note that they do not deal with "poetry as itself," that is, with what
poetry is, or contains, or what it will yield to the poet; they describe
what must be done in order to make poems. The letters are "studio
notes" or observations on method in poetry, in the same spirit as
the notebooks of Da Vinci. Their main aim is to contrast "cultiva–
tion of the soul" with reliance on its "natural development,"
which, says Rimbaud, "takes place in every brain-so many ego–
ists proclaim themselves authors." The epithets applied to this
cultivation indicate a technical, even clinical, approach, rather
than a metaphysical one: he "who
wishes
to be a poet ...
looks
into
his soul,
examines
it,
tempts
it,
takes
hold
of it ... he
seeks
... he
drains
...
in
order to preserve only the quintessences
..." Prac·
tices throughout, never essences. Only once does the letter, quoted
to show that Rimbaud "has dedicated himself to
knowing"
(Mari–
tain's italics), refer to the intellectual results of this process, and
then it declares that the poet "arrives at the
unknown,"
he "ends by
losing the understanding of his visions." It would be hard to
imagine a greater indifference to knowing, or a greater devotion to
methodical creation.
Rimbaud had concluded from his studies of antique poetry
that the genuine poet did not center his attention on the poem, as
