Aesthetics and the Arts (2/3)

John Stuart Mill

From Fiction to Poetry

What is poetry? Well Mills gives a good example by bringing the point that everyone would agree that the words of Edgar Allen Poe would be held to a more poetic standard then say the back of a cereal box so in this distinction we see that there is indeed a quality in distinguishing the poetic. Mills believes that poetry is an expression of emotions and passions and in such logical fact would be the complete opposite. This might be hard to comprehend but the message he is sending is that when we view poetry or even write it we are not looking past whatever we are seeing and create a new image for it or as mills put it “one addresses itself to the belief; the other, to the feelings”   

Fiction or Poetry?

 The greatest poems could be read like narratives, used to paint pictures in the mind to provoke your inner most joys, fears, or a cacophony of emotions. This is all true but poetry is not alone for the novelist’s job is to do exactly that. But Mills believes there is indeed a direct difference between poetry and fiction by stating that they are to be interpreted differently and are even derived in different ways. Both fiction and poetry bring us much solace in our minds but they are telling us different stories, fiction tells us of ones outward experiences, the way much of all our lives are tangled together where we least expected it. Poetry tells us of one’s inner struggles and thoughts about the world and comes instead from your inward experiences, it is written subconscious of the listener. “Great poets are often proverbially ignorant of life. What they know has come by observation of themselves”

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/artbook.html/x5988.htm