Given that poetry, which is pre-eminent in the domain of metaphorical creation, is often discussed metaphorically, we have tried to find an approach that, though rigorous, will not suppress its mystery. Even if it is impossible to resort to methods as precise as those used in physics or chemistry, this does not mean that such a method remains a mere wish. Considering that in art the purely historical element is the artistic criterion that determines the artistic convention of cultural epochs, trends etc., we have tried to examine the evolution of the poetic criterion in Romanian culture. The only constant at work along the entire history of Romanian poetry is the poetic convention. This should be confounded neither with the literary convention, to which it belongs as a special form, nor with the prosodic one, which it includes in almost all cultural epochs. The history of poetry is ultimately the history of poetic convention and of the attitudes it arouses. As far as poetic revolutions are concerned (pre-eminent in the evolution of poetry is that which affects the poetic criterion; changes in poetic vocabulary are recurrent, but they alone could not constitute a poetic revolution), what becomes obsolete is the convention; and what is important within it is the rapport between the norms of the age and the intentional or involuntary deviations from it. In this examination of the history of poetic convention, we have duly focused on its internal norms, insisting particularly on shifts of tonality. The normative rigours of classicism – from which authors tried to free themselves, just as 20th century poets wanted to break free from the pre- eminence of Eminescu – marked Romanian literature once; therefore the interpenetration of genres, especially of the traditional forms, is quite frequent. In each cultural age, poetry is a language which changes faster and more radically than language itself, based on an extremely resistant convention. That is why there is no universal language of poetry (except the metaphorical one), but languages specific to various cultural ages. One method of analysing them would be identifying the prejudices on poetry characterizing each epoch.
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