that is supposed to reach 240 kilometers per hour produced quite ‘encouraging’ results. Erfreulich [cheering] here means heralding cheer or joy [Freude], not cheer in the sense of pleasure (as opposed to disagreeableness), but cheer in the eminent meaning of the Greek word χάρις—charm, enchantment, and therein unapproachable dignity. Yet this reading of erfreulich indicates only why we cannot read “play,” and does not yet justify why we must read “speak.” This can be shown only from our more extensive interpretation.
§ 4. Concerning the Essence of Poetry
a) The Commonplace Conception of Poetry as an Outward Manifestation of Lived Experiences
Our endeavors concern the poetry in the poem. Seen extrinsically, this entails a transition from one thing, the piece of text lying present before us that has a content and a form—both perhaps embellished— over to another, to the poetry. What is meant by ‘poetry’ here? We must, after all, know this in one way or another if we are not just to be thrust blindly from the poem into the poetry. For manifestly we are supposed to understand and comprehend the poetry, thus stand knowingly within it. We must therefore know of it, simply to be able to distinguish it properly from the poem. And if we are guided here by some idea or other of ‘poetry,’ then we must be familiar with it as such, especially if it is a commonplace conception that governs us all as though it were natural. In this respect, putting things in a deliberately crude way, we can say the following: We find poetry wherever there is poetizing. And poetizing—this is accomplished above all with the aid of the imagination. The poet imagines something, not just something arbitrary, but whatever he has ‘experienced’ either in the external world or within himself, a so-called lived experience [Erlebnis]. This is then thought out more fully and above all pictured and given the form of symbolic presentation—that is, poetized. Lived experience thus becomes condensed in poetry, and precipitates out in a form that can be extrinsically grasped: for example, in the form of the lyric poem. And one can describe these processes and lived experiences in the ‘poetic soul’ more profoundly—with the aid of modern ‘depth psychology,’ for instance. This will involve above all the comparison of various types of poet as representative of various genres of poetry, such as epic, lyric, and dramatic; depth psychology then becomes research into types, and these types can be further investigated in their diverse profiles in each case and in accordance with their belonging to a particular culture of a particular era.