noble action

Can a biography be poetic? Only if the anecdotes are transmuted into poems, that is, only if the deeds and the dates cease to be history and become exemplary. But exemplary not in the didactic sense of the term but in the sense of “noble action,” as when we say: unique example. Or: myth, ideal argument and real fable. The poets help themselves to legends in order to tell us real things; and with real events they create fables, examples. The dangers of poetic biography are twofold: the unsolicited confession and the unasked counsel.

—Octavio Paz, “Luis Cernuda: The Edifying Word,” On Poets and Others, translated by Michael Schmidt, Seaver Books 1986