There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheMan cannot persist long in a conscious state, he must throw himself back into the unconscious, for his root lives there.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheNeither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him! [Ger., Du bist noch nicht der Mann den Teufel festzuhalten.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe