Harry Lanz, 1931:
"[I]n ordinary speech, in prose, we entirely forget about the physical existence of words as signs or sounds. Meaning, ideas, is what we get for it. With their physical reality forgotten [...] the words become transparent [...] fully resolved into what they mean. Poetry is called upon to save the physical element of words and bring it to our attention in the name of art. Thus sound, the music of words, acquires an independent artistic value with is largely indifferent to the meaning or the sense of it"
see his The Physical Basis of Rime: An Essay on the Aesthetics of Sound
Bernstein quibbles: "Lanz [...] is mistaken to claim / sound as independent of, rather than constitutive / of, meaning; or perhaps is mistaken to assume / that meaning is a strictly utilitarian concept."