Explore "A Survey of Modernist Poetry" by Laura Riding on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MODERN French poetic theory lays a great deal of emphasis on the phonetic sense of words; and has done so increasingly since the Symbolists. For a long time, indeed, the French have been dissatisfied with the success of poetry as compared with other arts, and have attempted to remedy its supposed deficiencies by bringing it closer to music. To do this they have had to insist on a musical meaning accompanying the word-meaning, on introducing a system of letter-notation similar to musical notation. Three lines from Paul Valéry will illustrate this picture-making in poetry by the help of sounds:
Il se fit Celui qui dissipe En conséquences son Principe, En étoiles, son Unité.