On reading Vico under contemporary conditions

Vico, The New Science, 1744

Nowadays Vico's discussion of the origins of poetry might be easily misread as a search for an original beginning. Instead it should be read as the articulation of a perspective-- what Vico would call ”principles“. 

First, People [nations] were poets because of natural necessity (“dimostrata necessità di natura”), not because of fancy. This natural necessity is sensuous (see previous post on Vico): it originates in humans' relationship to nature.  It would be a mistake to separate humans from the natural world and turn them into exceptions. Also, language and poetry are co-constitutive.

Second, given historical stratification and refinement (itself a natural process), today it is hard, almost impossible, to understand the natural necessity of poetry. Today it is much easier to consider poetry as the product of artifice and refinement, as an unnecessary, useless (because fictional) and unproductive activity (unless it sells, but that's a different discussion). Understanding the necessity of poetry requires the effort to see beyond the confined limits of abstract thinking. It requires a change of perspective, and a reflection on a different modality of knowledge.

Third, poetry embodied is thought in images -imaginative ("fantastici"), not abstract, ways of making sense of  reality.

Fourth, these poetic genres were “true fables” and constituted history. This means that one can read poetry as history, if one keeps in mind that poetic genres also articulate a specific epistemology, that is to say, they embody a specific modality of knowledge. At the end of the passage Vico returns to the idea that poetry is a necessity and that poverty of words and expressions pushed people to articulate their images/ideas in poetic idiom.