[314] Now in poetry^a the situation is such that the DECISIVE things are the connotations. The meaning of the words of course is, so to speak, eternal . . . but if a word is used in a poem, all the traditional and emotional connotations which we have in ourselves come into the words, and there they produce the meaning which otherwise cannot be expressed at all. But of course a poem is not a matter of individual words and their connotations. They are connotations mediated also through the SOUND of the words. There is a musical element in all poetry, and therefore poetry originally was sung and not spoken. There are rhythms, and rhythm is a fundamental revelation of reality. Reality, in our

perceiving of it and in its structure, always has a rhythmical character. Without rhythm, we cannot understand anything. It is an interesting observation that if we go in a railway train and go from one track to the other, all the time, it is always the same, but our ear cannot perceive it as always the same---it makes hexameters or pentameters, but that is not true. The reality is always buh! buh! buh! buh! -- but the rhythm which only our ear is able to perceive, makes a rhythm out of it. So in rhythm there is a revelatory character about the reality of the world.

Now if all this is combined in a poem which is a work of art, then we have an encounter with reality in which something is revealed in these three forms (which I discussed last time: the cognitive element, the anticipatory element, and the expressive element) which otherwise cannot be produced at all. In this way the words and sentences, and the connotations and