"There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired"
About this Quote
Young is drawing a line in the sand against the Enlightenment itch to make everything legible, sortable, and useful. When he says poetry lives "beyond prose logic", he is not rejecting reason so much as refusing reason its usual imperial role. Prose is the language of explanation and proof; it moves in straight lines and demands receipts. Poetry, in Young's framing, moves by compression, association, music, and charged silence. Its "mystery" is not a fog machine but a feature: the experience of meaning arriving faster than paraphrase can catch it.
The subtext is defensive and a little daring. Young is staking poetry's cultural authority on what cannot be audited. "Not to be explained but admired" reads like a preemptive rebuttal to the critic who wants a thesis statement, or the moralist who insists art justify itself with a lesson. Admiration here isn't passive; it's an ethical posture, a willingness to let art act on you without immediately converting it into argument. That stance protects poetry from reduction, but it also elevates the reader's capacity for reverence as a kind of intelligence.
Context matters: Young writes in an era where rationalist prose and philosophical systems were ascendant, while early Romantic sensibilities were incubating. His claim anticipates Romantic defenses of the sublime and the ineffable, but with Augustan poise: mystery is not chaos, it's disciplined enchantment. The line works because it flatters poetry without making it vague; it names the exact tension readers feel when a poem hits hard and the best explanation feels like a downgrade.
The subtext is defensive and a little daring. Young is staking poetry's cultural authority on what cannot be audited. "Not to be explained but admired" reads like a preemptive rebuttal to the critic who wants a thesis statement, or the moralist who insists art justify itself with a lesson. Admiration here isn't passive; it's an ethical posture, a willingness to let art act on you without immediately converting it into argument. That stance protects poetry from reduction, but it also elevates the reader's capacity for reverence as a kind of intelligence.
Context matters: Young writes in an era where rationalist prose and philosophical systems were ascendant, while early Romantic sensibilities were incubating. His claim anticipates Romantic defenses of the sublime and the ineffable, but with Augustan poise: mystery is not chaos, it's disciplined enchantment. The line works because it flatters poetry without making it vague; it names the exact tension readers feel when a poem hits hard and the best explanation feels like a downgrade.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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