Johnson and frustration

The famous statement from Rasselas on poetry that often gets quoted as Samuel Johnson's most concrete definition of the mission of proper poetry is usually quoted wrong. From M.H. Abrams' The Mirror and the Lamp to a literary anthology I just picked up yesterday, one only gets the end of chapter ten, while the whole discussion of poetry goes on into chapter eleven. It is crucial to see that this chapter break--like nearly all of the chapter breaks in Rasselas--does not start a new topic for discussion but rather breaks it up so as to problematize what occurs in the last chapter.

The oft-quoted portion runs like so:

The business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest: he is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.

The mission of poetry is to recall original images by general approximations--this famously echoes Reynold's definition of the best painting. But what does not often get quoted is the impossibility of this task (which therefore revolts against Reynolds, who thinks this task is accomplished all the time): in the next chapter, we get the following continuation of the discussion:

Imlac [who defines poetry above] now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to aggrandize his own profession, when the prince [Rasselas] cried out, “Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.”
“To be a poet,” said Imlac, “is indeed very difficult.”
“So difficult,” returned the prince, “that I will at present hear no more of his labours..."

I suggest that we not hear in this a mere note on how rarely Johnson's notion of poetry is achieved, but that this rarity is essential and constitutive of the abstracting proper to poetry that Johnson just expressed. That is, Johnson's definition of poetry is not just rarely brought into being, it is something impossible for any human being to achieve successfully. Poetry, then, is not a clean neoclassical place full of generalized beauty, but a realm of frustrated attempts to bring this beauty to life. The artwork, then, is never a closed object for Johnson, with smooth abstract edges. It is a perturbed, unfinished thing that can only approximate the approximation that is proper to the general character of art.