  Leave aside the fact that the poems of the supposed Ossian were concocted in eighteenth-century Edinburgh by James MacPherson, and were thus very much made for paper and print. Leave aside as well Herder’s supposition that the most dynamic poetry can only be composed by a “barbarous people,” Mycenaen Greeks or Scottish highlanders. The point remains that he connects the “living presence of the images” achieved by the most effective poetry with a corresponding feeling of freedom and of being alive. Paradoxically, poetry’s use of artificial rather than natural signs, which allows it to achieve the effects of painting and music combined, also allows it to engage our deepest emotions more thoroughly than those other arts, including ultimately the joyous feeling of being alive itself, even though the other arts use natural signs and might therefore have been thought to be more effective.