In a preface to Goethe's drama "Torquato
Tasso" Maria Filomena Molder ( Relógio D' Água Editores, 1999,
Lisbon) wrote a paragraph about "poetic suspension and metamorphosis"
and linked it to a work by Marina Tsvetaeva on Goethe's "Werther":
"L'Art à la lumière de la conscience" ( translated from the Russian by
Véronique Lossky, Le temps qu'il fait, Paris, 1987), before she developped her
own metaphors of butterflies "shedding their skin" and the silk-worm's
thread.
Even if Molder's article is not available in
English or in French, M. Tsvetaeva's must be accessible to those who know
Russian and French. I think her text ( which I haven't read except
through Molder's paraphrases) might be of interest to those
who study the theme of "demonic forces that impell a poet"
(applied to Goethe), and of the moment in which to decide that a poem
has reached the "end", as illustrated in "Pale Fire" by the poet's
own death.