pensamiento critico y practica poetica en donald davie - Universidad ...

“there is no way for us to use our language, however artless and
unpremeditated, that is not rhetorical” (OM, 223). Más palmariamente, “rhetoric
is inseparable from language, including language at its most demotically
spoken” (PIM, 256). La concepción wordworthiana de la poesía como ‘the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” se revela, bajo esta luz, ilusoria. Es
más, la espontaneidad también es retórica: ‘the affectation... that the poet
speaks trom the heart” es una “rhetorical illusion” que “poets like Dryden or
Watts” encuentran “undesirable and uninteresting” .
Quedando así anulada la oposición, Davie defiende la concepción estética
del clasicismo, fundamentada en el racionalismo naturalista aristotélico.
Refiriéndose a la “Conversation-Piece” de Dryden, Davie observa:
The speakers differ, as it were, in another dimension, according as sorne
suppose art more natural the more it seems lo be artless, while others, notably
Neander-Dryden himseif, suppose it more natural Ihe more artificial it is. This
1aM contention, which seems only a liresome paradox lo the modern mmd, is of
course al Ihe bottom of al! Renaissance poetic theory. It seems something
more Ihan a paradox it one argues 88 foliows: human nature is a part of
Nature, and indeed a specially importaní part, since man has potentiafilies, for
good a evil, beyond any other creature; it follows that man is following nalure
mosí faithfully, and revering her most, when he does most lo realise bis nobler
potentialities, since in it he approaches Ihe divine creativity; hence a poel is
more natural Ihe more he is creative, Ihe more he can make his creations
stand free trom himself, elaborate and self-sufficient. Ihis is the Renaissance
argument, and it is Dryden’s. (CM, 76)
Como vimos en el capítulo 1, si physis es igual a logos, cuanto más lógico y
racional sea el arte, más natural será. Así, retomando un conocido lema
horaciano, Davie afirma que “it ars est celare artem, then the more artificial the
art, the more it deserves credit for concealing itself” (OM, 79). El summum de
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