The two arcane words pullulated in the text of the Poetics; it was impossible to elude them.

[...] The first, that if the end purpose of the poem was surprise, its life would be measured not by centuries but by days and hours and even perhaps by minutes. The second, that a renowned poet is less an inventor than he is a discoverer. In praise of ibn-Sharaf of Berja it has been said and repeated that only he could imagine that the stars at dawn fall slowly, like leaves falling from a tree; if such an attribution were true, it would be evidence that the image is worthless. An image one man alone can compose is an image that touches no man. There are an infinite number of things on earth; any one of them can be equated to any other. To equate stars to leaves is no less arbitrary than to equate them with fishes or birds. [...]

he condemned the ambition to innovate as both illiterate and vainglorious