“Those books,” I say to myself, looking on the four volumes of my own poems, “I dare claim to be real poetry because they were in truth bom out of my hatred, that is when my love of poetry at once grew intense and turned to the hatred of poetry.” Oh, that moment, indeed, of the true love and hatred, that very moment, there was my own poetry for once and forever; how I feared to look back and read again the poems when they were once done, or to be looked back upon by those poems, as if they were the sins I had committed from fascination, of which I was frightened and repented. That is my confession; and you might call the poems of mine the real self-revelation of my own soul full of love of poetry, that is to say, full of hatred of poetry, provided that world “self-revelation” means more than the common use. I should say that the man who is able to hate poetry is far better qualified even as a mere reader to become the true lover of poetry; how tired I am to hear one say that he loves poetry with all his heart and soul.
