Author: Henri Bremond

Cited by

• Grace McCleen (1)
  • IN: The Professor of Poetry (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Sometimes," Pere de Grandmaison tells us, "during the contemplation of a work of art, or while listening to a melody, the effort to understand relaxes, and the soul simply delights itself in the beauty which it divines... or merely a memory, a word, a line of Dante or Racine shooting up from the obscure depths of our soul, seizes hold of us, 'recollects' and penetrates us. After this experience we know no more than we did, but we have this impression of understanding a little something that before we hardly knew, of tasting a fruit the rind of which we have scarely nibbled." Such an experience is, among others, an instance of those "profane states of nature in which we can decipher the great lines, and discern the image and rough sketch of the mystical states of the soul..."
    FROM: Prayer and Poetry: A Contribution to Poetical Theory, (1927), Book, France