the attempts of people to explain it. I quite agree with him there though not in his too sweeping theory of poetry. To explain that poem is to murder it and dissect the corpse. One can’t explain it, one can only feel and live the truth behind it.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Fragment ID: 7385
Housman’s Poetics [2]
Read the remarks of Housman on the magnificent poem of Blake he quotes in full [“My Spectre around me night and day”] and the attempts of people to explain it. I quite agree with him there though not in his too sweeping theory of poetry. To explain that poem is to murder it and dissect the corpse. One can’t explain it, one can only feel and live the truth behind it.
3 December 1936