Of the other poets, Baratýnsky
wrote very little prose, but this little contains a quite disproportionate
amount of the best things ever said in Russian on the subject of poetry. Two of
his utterances should be especially remembered: his definition of lyrical
poetry as "the fullest awareness of a given moment," and his remark
that good poetry is rare because two qualities, as a rule mutually exclusive,
are necessary to the making of a poet—"the fire of creative imagination
and the coldness of controlling reason."
—D.S. Mirsky, "The Poets' Prose," A History of Russian
Literature: From the Beginnings to 1900
(Vantage Books, 1958), edited by Francis J. Whitfield
