SOURCE: "Introduction: Facing Textuality," in Seductive Resistance: The Poetry of Théophile Gautier, Rodopi, 1994, pp. 1-7.

In the excerpt below, Schick examines the aesthetics of Gautier's poems, noting that "Gautier's concept of poetry stresses the preeminence of words, of craft and of beauty."

Poetry afforded Théophile Gautier his greatest pleasure as a writer. He repeatedly expressed his delight in what he referred to as a sculpturing in verse:

Les esprits qu'on est convenu d'appeler pratiques . . . n'auront pas connu leur [the poets'] pur enchantement: contempler la nature, aspirer à l'idéal, en sculpter la beauté dans cette forme dure et difficile à travailler du vers, qui est, comme le marbre de la pensée, n'est-ce pas là un noble et digne emploi de ce temps qu'on regarde aujourd'hui comme de la monnaie?¹

Expressing the opinion that writers of poetry were superior to writers of prose, he explains: "Un chanteur sait...