Only one who can speak the art-language wins the title of poet. This art-language differs from ordinary speech in that it employs special terms, images, figures, etc., which not everybody will understand. The eternal gulf between being and idea can only be bridged by the rainbow of imagination. The word-bound concept is always inadequate to the torrent of life...
What poetic language does with images is to play with them. It disposes them in style, it instills mystery unto them so that every image contains the answer to an enigma. In archaic culture the language of poets is still the most effective means of expression, with a function much wider and more vital than the satisfaction of literary aspirations. It puts ritual into words, it is the arbiter of social relationships, the vehicle of wisdom, justice and morality. All this it does without prejudice to its play character, for the setting of archaic culture itself is the play-circle. At this stage cultural activities are performed as social games; even the most utilitarian gravitate towards one play-group or another. But as civilization increases in spiritual amplitude, the regions where the play-factor is weak or barely perceptible will develop at the cost of where it has free play. Civilization as a whole becomes more serious – law and war, commerce, technology, and science lose touch with play; and even ritual, once the field ‘par excellence’ for its expression, seems to share the process of dissociation. Finally only poetry remains as the stronghold of living and noble play.
...The system is preserved and passed on as a noble science. It is no accident that we can observe this exquisite cult of poetry in very similar forms among peoples so far apart in time and space that they can have had little or no contact with the richer and more ancient civilizations which might otherwise have influenced their literature. This is true, for instance, of pre-Islamic Arabia and the Iceland of the Eddas and sagas.