Abstract
The chapter defends the claim that lyric poetry, despite 'a certain resistance to aesthetic illusion' (Werner Wolf), can create aesthetic illusion by specific means that escape the narrative framework most often connected with aesthetic illusion in philosophy of literature. My main contention is that every fiction is fiction of a life, and that only as such it actually produces what we call illusion.
The specific quality of lyric illusion follows from the impossibility to reduce the poem's linguistic expression - and its emotional impact - to narrative dimension, thus revealing some universal structures that are present in things rather than human actions. By projecting us into this timeless heart of transience, lyric poetry suggests that there is a deeper and unbreakable epistemic illusion under the breakable aesthetic illusion. - Besides evoking some Kantian themes including the relation between aesthetic illusion and morality, I also turn to examples ranging from Wordsworth through W.
S. Merwin to Louise Glück.