The importance of emotion to poetry…

Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese scholar and philosopher (1730–1801). He said that there were so many love poems in the world because love, more than any other emotion, stirred the heart deeply and demanded an outlet in poetry. So it was to love poems that we must look for lines which were profoundly expressive of human emotion.

Man seemed to be constantly concerned not so much with love but rather with personal success and the acquisition of wealth, in which he appeared to be completely and unreasonably absorbed. So that posed the question of why there were no poems expressive of these sentiments.

He wrote: There is a distinction between emotion and passion. All the varied feelings of the human heart are emotions, but those among them which seek for something in one way or another are passions. These two are inseparable, passions being in general a kind of emotion. Only such feelings as sympathy for others, sadness, sorrow, and regret are specifically called emotions. But as far as poetry is concerned, it comes only from emotion. This is because emotion is more sensitive to things and more deeply compassionate. Passion is absorbed only in the acquisition of things; it does not move one deeply or intimately. Thus, it has no capacity for tears at the sight of flowers or the song of birds.

See: Sources of Japanese Tradition Volume 2, Columbia University Press, New York, 1964.