Random thoughts...

the way Pushkin (in the set of poems linked previously) suddenly translates a state of feeling into a dramatic scene (for example the angry father taking the child's coffin to the church)... Eliot's "objective correlative".

Pushkin was early & exemplary Russian professional "man of letters". Defended independence & dignity of writer's trade.

Thinking of my own floundering on listserves & blogs & self-publications. & if (aside from personal factors) it might have something to do with stylistic or aesthetic choices.

The notion - a modernist dogma - of art for art's sake, poetry's autonomy & self-referentiality... & the associated danger of solipsism and emotional dessication. Whereas a practice of "objective correlative" (illustrated here by Pushkin) is a means of finding symbolic resonance for shared, common feelings & understandings. That this is also what poetry is about - not only the construction of free-standing art-objects. That is, it's a matter of both-and. Artwork as conjunction of the two - ethos and harmony.

The poet wades courageously into the river of public conversation, impelled by a sometimes-confused sense of impinging harmony. Pushkin's epithet for the poets : "sons of harmony". (should be "children", or "sons & daughters", of course)