poetry: intellect desiring itself
Nel ciel che più della sua luce prende Fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire Né sa, nè può chi di lassù discende; Perché, appressando sè al suo disire Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, Che dietro la memoria non può ire. Dante, Paradiso, Canto I, 4-9 is poetry something akin to the intellect's deepening towards its own desire? Dante's articulation clarifies the widely circulated idea that poetry expresses what cannot be expressed. The verses delineate a temporal sequence between an experience and its retelling. Certain experiences, such as Dante's approach to Paradise, are such that one does not know how to, and cannot, retell them: memory can only go to a certain extent. The verses are not the rendition of the experience, just a statement about the impossibility of wording them. The distinction is subtle but definitive. There is a domain beyond language that language cannot access. All it can do is recount the conditions of such experience but not the experience itself.