Hegel's distinction between the sensuous and the spiritual apprehension of art, like many of his ideas, continues to cast a shadow on literary criticism. His dismissal of “a speech, for example” as something other than art (despite the possibility that a speech might make occasional use of “sensuous ideas and feelings”) complicates the status of poetry by requiring it, as a true art form, to exist at once a material object and also as intentional, communicative discourse. As the previous chapter explained at some length, Hegel also points out that this dual existence in both the sensuous and spiritual realms is precisely what constitutes an object as art, separating artistic from natural beauty.