“ To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. ”
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872). copy citation
| Author | George Eliot |
|---|---|
| Source | Middlemarch |
| Topic | knowledge feeling poetry |
| Date | 1872 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/145/145-h/145-h.htm |
Context
“You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and literature, which you know so much of. I wonder what your vocation will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?»
«That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.»
«But you leave out the poems,» said Dorothea. «I think they are wanted to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.” source
«That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.»
«But you leave out the poems,» said Dorothea. «I think they are wanted to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.” source
Meaning and analysis
