8.07.2012

tempted by philosophy

The great danger which threatens us, poets tempted by philosophy, is that we should be drawn into explaining our aims instead of writing our work. Criticism judges us on our aphorisms, and not on our poems. We have been contaminated by German philosophy, saturated with commentaries on Hölderlin, and I need not so much as mention our familiarity with the pre-Socratics.

—Pierre Emmanuel, “Lines of Force in French Poetry,” lecture delivered March 1959 at the Library of Congress, collected in Literary Lectures (Library of Congress, 1973).

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