when they are composing their beautiful strains … For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and reason is no longer in him; no man, while he retains that faculty, has the oracular gift of poetry. 8 And so Socrates establishes the lines, or at least the outlines, along which arguments about enthusiasm, and poetry's relation to it, have continued to flow ever since. In the image of the inspired relation as a magnetic stone, he imports into enthusiasm at this outset of its intellectual trajectory, the ideas of communicability, circulation and transmission. To be in the mental state known as enthusiasm is to be ready to receive words, intimations and ideas, but it is also to be in a state to pass them on. The enthusiast, thus understood, is a circulator of thoughts, a person who keeps ideas and values moving. This meaning of enthusiasm, and the image of the enthusiast it throws up, is crucial to this book. Enthusiasm, it will be argued, and more particularly the enthusiast, are integral to the making but also the circulating of literary culture: witness those great American mobilizers Ezra Pound and Frank O'Hara. It is not, however, the question of enthusiasm's capacity for transmission that most concerns Socrates. What he wants to establish, rather, is the nature of the enthusiast's state of mind. The point of the dialogue is to establish what the rhapsode, and prior to that the poet, knows, or rather doesn't know. By a process of elimination Socrates demonstrates to Ion that he doesn't, in any real sense, know anything about the works he recitesthat he isn't, for instance, as well placed as a charioteer to comment on Homeric renderings of charioteering, or as well placed as a fisherman to comment on passages about fish-and that, therefore, either he must concede that in having initially claimed knowledge he was lying, or that, in fact, as Socrates wants to insist, he is inspired. Not that this is a compliment. Poetry, and the performance of poetry, is not, from this Socratic point of view, an art; it does not require technical skill-the form a poem takes is equally a gift of the inspiring agency-but involves, rather, the abandonment of all shaping faculties. In enthusiasm the poet will be 'out of his senses, and reason is no longer in him'. Poets, in other words, are as nothing: 'God himself is the speaker, and … through them he is addressing us'. 9 The opposition is clear: the mental state known as enthusiasm, the state of poetic composition, is counterposed to reason, and requires that the poet be in some sense 'out of his senses', from which it follows for Plato-as for numerous subsequent commentators on enthusiasm-that the poet, or the enthusiast generally, doesn't know anything, that he or she isn't capable, in that state, of knowledge. Except, of course, that the poet does know something. He or she does in some sense know the god, the inspiring divinity-in the sense, perhaps, Enthusiast! Essays on Modern American Li...
Aims, Objectives and BackgroundCorticosteroids can be used to treat idiopathic facial paralysis (Bell’s palsy) in children, but their effectiveness is uncertain.AimsTo determine if prednisolone improves recovery of children with Bell’s palsy at one month.Method and DesignDouble-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, trial of prednisolone in children presenting to ED with Bell’s palsy.1Patients 6 months to <18 years, recruited <72 hours after symptom onset, were randomly assigned to receive 10 days of treatment with oral prednisolone (1 mg/kg) or placebo. The primary outcome: complete recovery of facial function at 1 month on the House-Brackmann scale.2Secondary outcomes: facial function, adverse events and pain to 6 months.Results and ConclusionBetween October 2015 to August 2020, 187 children were randomised (94 to prednisolone and 93 to placebo) and included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 1 month, the proportions of patients who had recovered facial function were 49% (n=43/87) in the prednisolone group compared with 57% (n=50/87) in the placebo group (risk difference -8.1%, 95% CI -22.8 to 6.7; adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.7, 95% CI 0.4 to 1.3). At 6 months these proportion were 99% (n=77/78) for prednisolone and 93% (n=76/82) for placebo respectively (risk difference 6.0%, 95% CI -0.1 to 12.2; aOR 3.0 95% CI 0.5 to 17.7) (figure 1). There were no serious adverse events and little evidence for group differences in secondary outcomes.Abstract 1396 Figure 1In children with Bell’s palsy the vast majority recover without treatment. The study does not provide evidence that early treatment with prednisolone improves complete recovery.ReferencesSullivan F, Swan I, Donna P, Morrison J, Smith B, McKinstry B,et al. Early treatment with prednisolone or acyclovir in bell’s palsy.N Eng J Med2007;357(16):1598–607.House JW, Brackmann DE. Facial nerve grading system.Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1985;93(2):146–7.
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