| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 37908 |
| QUOTATION: | Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), French philosopher. The Range of Reason, ch. 3, Scribner (1953). |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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