The melody of words - An essay on poetry and music
The essential thing in art is to express; what is expressed does not matter. Fernando Pessoa - Aforisms
It seizes me, the distinction between music and poetry; in the former, feeling produces meaning, whereas in the latter, meaning provokes feeling.
This is not a reflection on the manner in which these art forms are generated, but rather, fundamentally, on the effect—or the end—they bring about in their recipients (listeners or readers). Words and verses stand to the poem as musical notes and melodies stand to music. The two expressions of art present an intriguing intuitive contrast, one that may be better understood through the Greek concepts of arkhé (principle) and télos (end), as explained by M. Spinelli: “In the arkhé lies the télos, that is, in the starting point of the process of generation lies the ultimate aim of that which is born, grows, and is fulfilled in itself.” Like a small seed containing within it the grand tree in potential. Without feeling, music has no effect (meaning); without meaning, poetry cannot achieve its aim (feeling).
Loose words, lacking connection in factual or emotional sense, however perfectly harmonious in aesthetic form, produce an empty artifact, null in its effect, for it lacks essence. It is therefore necessary to seize—and why not, to conquer—the reader’s mind, in order to awaken in them the feeling the poet wishes to convey, be it strangeness, joy, sorrow, fear, revulsion, excitement, or even epiphany. In short, all that makes us human. Melodies that evoke no feeling will fail to touch the listener’s consciousness and, as a result, will be unable to reach the perception of meaning—whether intimate and introspective, or evocative of a personal memory.
The Taijitu (tài jí tú) symbol represents the yin–yang concept of complementarity between two opposing forces or entities—fundamentally not antagonistic, for harmony between them requires an interdependent and dynamic equilibrium. Transposing this to the dual or polar relation between meaning and feeling, it becomes clear that one cannot exist without the other, each containing the seed of the other in mirrored essence, whether in music or poetry. There must be balance in the way meaning and feeling interrelate within each art form. Perfect music and poetry, in the Taoist yin–yang conception, hold the meaning–feeling duality in perfect balance, achieving a total art—Taoist, circular as the symbol itself. Meaning and feeling as complementary forces. Meaning and emotion are not rivals; they belong to the same aesthetic coin.
A machine or robot can never be moved by a poem or a musical composition. An artificial intelligence may read poetry, even produce verse, but it cannot feel poetry. One must possess the emotional and sentimental framework within which verses and melodies may echo, rest, and flourish. The final effect generated by music, however, is more direct, for emotion is constructed immediately by the qualities of sounds and their compositions, which dispense with the need for literal rational consciousness; there is a direct link between music and feeling. In modern language, music “hacks” the higher cortical cognitive functions of the brain and accesses in situ the archaic limbic system, including the amygdala (the center of emotions) and the hippocampus (formation of memories), through the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe—producing self-awareness and reverie, fostering introspection, and activating imagination, above all through the Default Mode Network. Each individual who feels music translates it through their own experience; through the filter of their consciousness and life, each musical experience is thus unique to them.
It is impossible to deny the deep interrelation and connection between music and poetry. The blind epic poet wandered the roads of ancient Greece, reciting from memory the verses of the greatest literary work of all time—the Iliad and the Odyssey—in the 7th century BC. Could there be a more musical experience than the great poet singing his own verses? The aedoí, or poet-singers, recited from memory poems of their own composition, over generations before they were set down in writing; the rhapsodoí, by contrast, recited existing poems by other authors. Both were itinerant artists, essential to the transmission and preservation of epic poetry. Homer, a poet whom some have dehumanized—or rather, “ultra-humanized”—became himself a symbol, an idea encompassing the entire culture of archaic Greek civilization, whose work has permeated the centuries.
It is curious to note that there was once speculation about the inability of the ancient Greeks to perceive and distinguish colors as “modern” man does. William Gladstone (1809–1898), four-time British prime minister, went so far as to suggest that Greek civilization at the time lacked a developed sense of color. This was due to Homer’s descriptions in which honey is called “green,” the near absence of the color “blue,” and the ox and the sea as “wine-colored” (oínops)—a tradition not only of Greek culture but also of poetic symbolism, associating dark colors with “maturity” or “vigor.”
One cannot help but marvel at the sheer genius of the poet, creating such vivid and intense imagery despite his blindness—and recall Ludwig van Beethoven composing, millennia later, his Symphony No. 9 in D minor entirely deaf, unable to hear a single note of his masterpiece. In both, we find the highest expression of human capacity to create something universal—thought that transcends, and indeed defies, sensory limitations otherwise fundamental and insurmountable to ordinary individuals—emerging in works that immortalized them. Homer, monumental blind poet; Beethoven, immortal deaf composer—the two joined across centuries by a thread of sensory transcendence, their arts surpassing the limits of the body—arkhé and télos greater than the physical senses. It seems even geniuses are not spared the tragedies of fate, and perhaps they transmuted such tragedy into the very fuel of their art, seized by an urgency to live before fading. There is no time for complacency. “Whether or not there are gods, we are their subjects” wrote Pessoa. It is the irrefutable proof that human genius and grandeur are a divine curse—real or fictional—for while granting us the broadest consciousness, it limits us with supreme irony. As if with one hand it bestowed the spark of eternity, and with the other exacted its price.
Many Greek poems of the Archaic or Classical period are essentially musical works, although their melodies have not reached us intact. The poet, besides writing the poem, composed music for the lyre and flute. The verses were sung and, at times, danced. We can only imagine, as in a distant dream, the poetic force of those sung verses, with their rhythm and reverberation of harmonic color and intensity; there is no rhyme in epic poems, and we must envision them as listeners, not readers. Hellenic orality long allowed—and even demanded—the intimate, rich relationship between poetry and music. We are speaking here of grand works with 24 cantos each, which could be performed over days and nights without pause. The Greek epic verse (dactylic hexameter) is deeply traditional in its measure; the aedoí employed and explored both the sound of the words and their meaning. Modern aedoí, if they existed, would restore to poetry its ancestral orality.
In music, feeling generates meaning. In poetry, meaning generates feeling. Music invades through the pores of emotion, striking the heart before the word. Poetry, on the other hand, demands that the mind open the door—calling for consciousness and entering with its keys of symbolism and metaphor—so that emotion may dwell within. Each contains arkhé and télos, intertwined; the principle of one is the end of the other. Each art is the mirrored version of the other—not antagonistic, but harmonious.
And between the mirrors in duality, facing one another, appears the image of a complete and virtuous human being, multiplied to infinity in potential.
The virtuous human is not perfect, but whole—integral, a friend to himself, reconciled with the ideal of a possible, lived, and concrete man, not an abstract one—sculpting the very essence (ousia) of humanity with freedom, and fulfilling himself therein. Yes, Fernando Pessoa was right to affirm that “the essential in art is to express; what is expressed does not matter.” The beautiful holds value in itself, because it expresses the inner unity and harmony of the excellent human being. Beauty not only as aesthetic, but as a means of fully realizing one’s own humanity, in a balanced and graceful form.
I allow myself to dream of that mythical generation when the boundary between poetry and music was indistinct—a time when they were one; a past adorned in more beautiful colors, when gods interceded, inspiring the heroic deeds of men and women, sung and eternalized in epic verses and melodies.
This essay was originally published in Portuguese on June 28, 2025. You can read the original version here:
