The intrusted treasure of the poet

I've been reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and a passage in it addresses the way he views the significance of the poet. In the section "A Panegyric upon Abraham," Kierkegaard writes,

If a consciousness of the eternal were not implanted in man; if the basis of all that exists were but a confusedly fermenting element which, convulsed by obscure passions, produced all, both the great and the insignificant; if under everything there lay a bottomless void never to be filled what else were life but despair? If it were thus, and if there were no sacred bonds between man and man; if one generation arose after another, as in the forest the leaves of one season succeed the leaves of another, or like the songs of birds which are taken up one after another; if the generations of man passed through the world like a ship passing through the sea and the wind over the desert—a fruitless and a vain thing; if eternal oblivion were ever greedily watching for its prey and there existed no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches—how empty were life then, and how dismal! And therefore it is not thus; but, just as God created man and woman, he likewise called into being the hero and the poet or orator.

I realize that's a relatively long and intricate passage, but basically, Kierkegaard is addressing the meaninglessness that could have existed in life if God had not created the relationship between the poet and the hero. He compares the relationship of poet and hero to the relationship that exists between man and woman: they exist as distinctly seperate beings, but they have an important interdependence between them that creates essential meaning in the world.

Kierkegaard describes the poet as someone who happily admires the hero but lacks the capability to take on the role of the hero. He is the "genius of memory" who can recall and admire only what has already been done. Also, the poet "contributes nothing of his own, but is jealous of the intrusted treasure." That idea of jealousy interested me because in some of the Romantic writings we've been reading about the poet, the writers seem almost to have a jealousy for the the fact that they've been intrusted with this intuitive gift to seek eternal truths, and yet they so often fail at capturing them with words. Emerson talks about the way that the poet is representative; his ideas do not belong to him. In fact, he writes that when the poet finally produces something new and orginal, "it is as strange and beautiful to him as to you" (737-8). So while Kierkegaard's discussion of the poet is a more relational description of the poet in terms of the concept of the hero, I think it's insightful into more of the ways we can view the role of the poet.