distress

the translation changed things for the poet by removing his susceptibility to the trance condition, the mood in which the poetic self could overpower the whole mind in a more unhindered fashion. that this susceptibility is gone is a fact. there are some obvious psychological reasons for its demise, all connected with the loss of instinctive self-subjection to the greater authority of spirit.

the pervasiveness of secular sceptiscm operates generally.

for any poet, this means acute distress. it means, in effect, that the poetic self's bid to convert the ordinary personality to its own terms, or to supplant it, or to dissolve it within itself, will be more successfully resisted. and this in turn means depression -- the unproductive poet's melancholia.

it may take the form of violent psychological or even physical breakdown, or religious crisis.