Unpoeticness

Beyond these positive remarks about Spinoza’s intentions and beyond Schleiermacher’s adoption of Spinoza’s “unpoeticness” in his own treatment of the “mythical” parts of the New Testament, we also find him using language in The Christian Faith that is reminiscent of his own description of Spinoza’s logic in his Kurze Darstellung des spinozistische Systems.

George “translates” into “poetic language” what in Baudelaire breaks out of it. All the things the “poetic” avoids—industry, social unrest, technology—become materials for Baudelaire not in spite of their unpoeticness but because of it.

What in historical, rhetorical and geographical writing was a move from poetic discourse to ‘poetic’ but unmetrical prose and then to ‘prosaic prose’ is (partially) analogised by comedy, which has a genetic relationship (of some kind) with tragedy, but which has also been brought down to its current ‘prosaic’ linguistic form.³⁹