A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Poetry most often communicates emotions, not directly, but by creating imaginatively the grounds for those emotions. It therefore communicates something more than the emotion; only by means of that something more does it communicate the emotion at all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry expresses emotions indirectly through imaginative ideas and imagery.
C. S. Lewis emphasizes that poetry transcends mere emotional expression by using creative language and imagery to evoke feelings. The true power of poetry lies in how it crafts an imaginative context that allows the reader to connect with deeper emotions, making them feel something beyond what is explicitly stated.
Themes
PoetryEmotionImaginationArtCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing the meanings of various poems.
More from C. S. Lewis
All quotes →I enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
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Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
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Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
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I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
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The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
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Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.
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When you draw a nude, sketch the whole figure and nicely fit the members to it and to each other. Even though you may only finish one portion of the drawing, just make certain that all the parts hang together, so that the study will be useful to you in the future.
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The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
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Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead