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The Misfortune of Poetry
Atlantic, The, October, 2002 by Christopher Hitchens
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>In Jane Austen's Persuasion , Anne Elliot has a surprising discussion with a shy naval officer about the relative merits of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, and finds Captain Benwick to be "so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly." It is notorious that the Napoleonic ...
