Style. The poetic style , according to M. le Batteux, includes thoughts, words, turns of phrase and harmony. All those parts are also present in prose; but in the arts such as Poetry, it is not enough to convey nature and convey it with all its possible attractions and charms; in order to attain its goal, Poetry is entitled to add a degree of perfection to these and elevate them above their natural state.

This is why in Poetry, thoughts, words, turns of phrases have a boldness, a freedom, a richness that would appear excessive in ordinary language. There are stark comparisons, dazzling metaphors, lively repetitions and unusual apostrophes. You have Aurora, the daughter of the morning opening the doors of the Orient with her rosy fingers; the river leaning on its slanting urn asleep, lulled by the soothing noise of its nascent waves; young zephyrs frolicking in enameled meadows or naiads playing in their crystal palace; this is not a meal, it is a feast.

The poetry of style consists furthermore in ascribing interesting feelings to everything that is given voice, like expressing in figures of speech and presenting in images capable of moving us, everything that would leave us cold if only the prosaic style were used.

However, each kind of poem has its own particular poetic style ; most images that so to speak are appropriate nourishment for the style of tragedy, would be too serious for the comic style ; at least a comic poem should use it very sparingly. Chremes should be the only model, as when this character for a moment experiences a tragic passion. We have already said in other articles that eclogues took their representations and images from objects adorning the countryside and from events of rural life. The poetic style of the satire must be filled with images most likely to disturb us. The ode goes to the heavens to borrow images and comparisons from thunder, the stars and the gods themselves; but familiarity with such things will have already educated those who love poetry.

Therefore we must believe that we are actually seeing, so to speak, when we hear verse: ut picture poesis , poetry as a picture , says Horatius. Cleopatra would attract less attention if the poet had her tell her brother's odious ministers in prose: be afraid, you villains; Caesar, who is just, will come armed with power; he arrives with his troops. Her ideas are far more dazzling and seem far loftier when they are dressed in poetic figures of speech and when she makes Caesar the instrument of Jupiter's vengeance. The line,

Tremble, villains, tremble: here comes the thunderbolt s hows me Caesar armed with thunder and the assassins of Pompey struck down. To say simply that it is no big thing to attract the love of a man who easily falls in love but that it is admirable to attract the love of a man who never showed much interest in love, that would be telling an ordinary truth and would not attract much attention. When Racine puts this truth in Aricie's mouth, endowed with the beauty bestowed by his poetic style , we are charmed. We are seduced by the images used by the poet to express what would have been a trivial idea had it been stated in prose. His verse transforms it into an eloquent discourse that is striking and memorable:

These lines outline five scenes in the imagination.

A man who would simply state: I will die in the same palace where I was born, would not move us much. To die is everyone's destiny and to end one's life in one's own home is one of the most fortunate destinies. However, L'abbé de Chaulieu presents this idea in images that make it immensely touching:

These apostrophes show me the poet in conversation with the divinities and with the trees of that place. I imagine them being moved by the news he brings them. The feeling he ascribes to them awakens in my heart a feeling similar to theirs.

The poetic style makes the biggest possible difference between verse and prose. Many metaphors that would seem too bold in the loftiest oratorical style are acceptable in poetry; images and figures of speech must be even more numerous in most poetic genres than in oratorical discourses. Rhetoric wants to convince our reason and hence should always appear moderate and sincere. This is not the case in Poetry that tries to make us sensitive to everything and would agree, so to speak, that it is often in bad faith. According to Horatius, it is possible to write poetry in a prose discourse; often also, a discourse in verse is only prose. In the last chapters of his eighth book and the first chapters of his following book, Quintilian explains so well the nature and use of images and figures of speech that there is nothing left to do but to admire his insight and great sense.

The most important part of poetry is at the same time the most difficult, that is to invent images that depict adequately what the poet wants to say. To find the expressions that will make them come alive he needs divine fire, but not for versifying. With the help of lots of advice and hard work, a mediocre poet can produce an orderly composition and give his characters decent morals. However, only a man with artistic genius can sustain his verse with continual invention and images that are renewed at every passage.

A man without genius soon produces the coldness due to inaccurate figures of speech that cannot clearly depict their object, or the ridicule provoked by figures of speech unsuited to the subject. Such are for example, the tropes used by the Carmelite author of the poem of Magdelaine that often produce grotesque images instead of the serious images the poet should have given us. The advice of a friend might well make us get rid of inappropriate or poorly imagined figures of speech, but it cannot inspire us with the necessary genius to invent those that should be used and that create the poetic style. The help of others cannot make a poet; at most it can contribute to his improvement.

A brief consideration of the destiny of French poems published in the last hundred years is all we need to convince us that what makes a poem great are the aptness and coherence of the images and pictures presented in the verse. It is always the nature of the poetic style that determines whether poems are successful or not, even those that seem to rely most on economical composition and organization, and on the action and the decency of morals.

We have two tragedies of the great Corneille, where the action and most of the characters are badly flawed, The Cid and the Death of Pompey. One could even contest the title of tragedy for the latter play. Nevertheless, the public is enchanted by the poetic style of those works and never grows tired of them. It rates them higher than several others where morals are better and the composition is orderly. No argument of the critics will ever convince the public of being wrong in considering as excellent works two tragedies that for a century have always made the spectators cry.

Our neighbors the Italians also have two epic poems in their language, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, that like the Iliad and the Aeneid have become part of the library of humankind. Taosso's poem is praised for the decency of the morals, for the dignity of the characters, and the economical composition; in other words for its orderliness. I will not say anything of the morals, the characters, decency and the composition of Ariosto's poem. Homer was a geometer compared to him and we know the nice name the Cardinal d'Est gave the formless jumble of poorly assembled stories that comprise Orlando Furioso. The unity of action is so badly maintained that subsequent editions have had to include notes where the poet interrupted a story and where he started it up again, to enable the reader to follow the thread of the story. This was very helpful to the public, for you do not read Ariosto twice in a row by going from the first canto to the second and from that one to the next, but by following regardless of the order of the books, the different stories he incorporated rather than blended. Nevertheless, Italians generally place Ariosto far above Tasso. After a formal examination of the suit, the academy of Crusca rendered an authoritative verdict that awards to Ariosto the first place among Italian epic poets. The most zealous defender of Tasso, Camillo Pelegrini, admits he is attacking general opinion and that everybody, charmed by his poetic style, prefers Ariosto. It is really better than the poetry of Jerusalem Delivered where the figures of speech are not always appropriately placed. Often the figures of speech are more brilliant and vivid than true. I mean that they are surprising and dazzle the imagination but they do not clearly paint images that are likely to move us.

All these details show us that the best poem is the one whose reading touches the most; it is the one that charms us to the point of hiding from us most of its flaws and to make it easy for us to forget even those we have seen and have shocked us. A poem interests us in proportion to the charm of the poetic style. Du Bos, reflections on poetry.