I shall hence deal in this volume largely with emotional or impassioned prose; for it belongs to the literature of ecstasy, although it is often termed poetic prose, or sometimes disparagingly, prose poetry. Under this term I shall include not only the so-called "fine writing" but emotional passages in the language of the average man, dialogues from prose dramas, novels and short stories, and I shall also regard criticism, essays and works on science and philosophy highly charged with feeling as part of the province of the literature of ecstasy.
This work becomes thus a treatise on poetics, and will present a new definition of poetry which will include all emotional prose writing.
A very important phase of the subject will take in the connection between poetry or the literature of ecstasy, and various spheres of human thought, such as ethical and social questions. The _idea_ will be shown to be an important factor in the literature of ecstasy, for ecstasy does not preclude the intellectual and moral activities. The notion of art for art's sake thus assumes a rather trivial aspect. Any idea whether scientific or philosophic, moral or social, if ecstatically presented, becomes itself literature of ecstasy, or poetry.
Should the reader conclude to accept the prose literature of ecstasy as poetry, he will find there was much poetry in the world's prose literature that he has never recognized as such. He will also be compelled to admit that much of what has been called poetry, because written in verse, does not properly belong to poetry, as not being of the literature of ecstasy. He will also see that the artificial classifications of the different kinds of poetry, such as epic, dramatic, pastoral, satirical, the ode, the sonnet, the ballad, the didactic poem, the idyl, the elegy, etc., were based on fallacies and were confusing and erroneous. There is only one species of poetry, the utterance of the ecstatic state, and this is always personal, whether in verse or prose, and hence, has a lyrical quality. If the poet gives the utterances of other people in ecstatic states, these also are lyrics. Hence every composition whether in verse or prose, that records ecstasy here and there, is lyrical in those parts where the ecstasy is depicted.