In “Antony and Cleopatra” Shakespeare seems to conceive of his titular couple as living their lives and making their choices according to what will make the best story about them afterwards. The stories we tell become a part of reality through the act of telling them.
Similarly Cervantes’ insight about Don Quixote seems to be that the noble knight of La Mancha truly does become a noble knight through his dedication to his (initially fictitious) goal.
T.S. Eliot on editing The Criterion: ‘It is the function of a literary review to maintain the autonomy and disinterestedness of literature, and at the same time to exhibit the relations of literature—not to ‘life’, as something contrasted to literature, but to all the other activities, which, together with literature, are the components of life.’
I don't know your reasons, but I feel like you might be missing out? I'm reading some Christopher Ricks essays (and your post reminded me of his use of this quote from Eliot) but one of the joys of it is his use of Eliot's criticism.
This quote was from 'Literary Principles as Against Literary Theory' in Essays in Appreciation (also, 'intelligence, of which an important function is the discernment of exactly what, and how much, we feel in any given situation'). But I just read the essay on William Empson in Force of Poetry, which is stunningly good (quote from Eliot: 'we can always accuse the pragmatist of believing his own doctrine in a sense which is not pragmatic but absolute—in other words, of eating his cake and having it too').
I always found that the best part of doing anything was telling my Grandma about it later. "This would make a good story" is natural to humans. It's how we're built.
"If you talk seriously and sensibly about literature then you are in fact talking about life." - D. J. Enright. "Literature is not life, just like that, but it has to do with life... Only the experience of literature coupled with good will towards it can enable one to see how literature and life, although distinct and different things, have yet a mysterious identity." Perhaps the point there is a little different, but I've always loved those lines.
I am trying to get back into reading verse , I bought the Helen Gardener New Oxford Book of English Verse as a starting anthology , you mention the Ricks edition wondering both are worth having and if selections are vastly different ( I have read a lot of verse mostly American and classical poets )
I got the Rick's from the library, different I will just read both put by ricks in last page of the previous edition.
Thanks, I have enjoyed both the second act and literary pod casts.
I have as a retirement act to get more people into reading and more youth at the opera. Lets see if I have the skill set, I am getting an early start so I am ready for it.
“To read, then, is not to receive commentary; it is not to see art as a mirror of the world or the lamp of a soul. It is to live. It is another way of living, just as walking and eating and loving and talking are.”
Oh if only! It was all I ever really wanted to do and I have been long sorry that it did not count as something! I had no trouble imagining how Emily Dickinson could stay ensconced in her own room in her own family house and just write. I did not want to do and write; I wanted to do that and read.
"It was all I ever really wanted to do and I have been long sorry that it did not count as something!" LOL same! I so loved being told in this little reflection that "to read really is another way of living"...not something opposed to living...
John Madrid's Shklovsky worry upthread (i.e., that estrangement needs the remove even though you argue literature was never at a remove) may dissolve if we split the word 'commentary'. Arendt, drawing out Benjamin in the Illuminations introduction, keeps his distinction between commentary, which goes after a work's subject matter, and critique, which goes after its truth content: the once-obvious content has to go strange before the truth becomes legible. On that reading your commentary is nearly the reverse of Benjamin's, whose commentary stays bound to the work, close to the ornament on the wall you describe. Shklovsky's estrangement then belongs to the critique pole and your never-at-a-remove to commentary, so both can hold, because they name different motions. Which puts the pressure back on the reader: whether you are dwelling or estranging has less to do with choosing than with whether the content has gone strange for you yet.
I'm an incurable diary-writer like Pepys, but I've always seen that diary-writing as just an expansion of life. For me, life is even fuller, even richer, even more vivid in literature, and it would be hard to imagine life without it!
The Pepys sentence is the one I keep going back to. He has to stop living to write the diary, and live half-distracted so that there's a diary to write. That's the bill for treating everything as copy, and it can't be paid in instalments.
Reading this next to Shklovsky is odd, though. He says art exists to give back the sensation of life that habit has worn away. But his method is estrangement, so he needs the remove in order to restore the thing. You're arguing literature was never at a remove to begin with.
humans love to story-tell. i think there's a parallel in here somewhere to a generous interpretation of internet culture, fueled by our compulsion to posting everything we think, do, and feel
In “Antony and Cleopatra” Shakespeare seems to conceive of his titular couple as living their lives and making their choices according to what will make the best story about them afterwards. The stories we tell become a part of reality through the act of telling them.
Similarly Cervantes’ insight about Don Quixote seems to be that the noble knight of La Mancha truly does become a noble knight through his dedication to his (initially fictitious) goal.
Yes, and Achilles wanted to die gloriously rather than live a long and peaceful life, because his death would result in a better story about him...
T.S. Eliot on editing The Criterion: ‘It is the function of a literary review to maintain the autonomy and disinterestedness of literature, and at the same time to exhibit the relations of literature—not to ‘life’, as something contrasted to literature, but to all the other activities, which, together with literature, are the components of life.’
Who knew I would ever agree with TSE
Oh, I didn’t know that you felt like that about him!
I don’t like his criticism very much
I don't know your reasons, but I feel like you might be missing out? I'm reading some Christopher Ricks essays (and your post reminded me of his use of this quote from Eliot) but one of the joys of it is his use of Eliot's criticism.
Which Ricks? Force of Poetry?
This quote was from 'Literary Principles as Against Literary Theory' in Essays in Appreciation (also, 'intelligence, of which an important function is the discernment of exactly what, and how much, we feel in any given situation'). But I just read the essay on William Empson in Force of Poetry, which is stunningly good (quote from Eliot: 'we can always accuse the pragmatist of believing his own doctrine in a sense which is not pragmatic but absolute—in other words, of eating his cake and having it too').
I always found that the best part of doing anything was telling my Grandma about it later. "This would make a good story" is natural to humans. It's how we're built.
"If you talk seriously and sensibly about literature then you are in fact talking about life." - D. J. Enright. "Literature is not life, just like that, but it has to do with life... Only the experience of literature coupled with good will towards it can enable one to see how literature and life, although distinct and different things, have yet a mysterious identity." Perhaps the point there is a little different, but I've always loved those lines.
Very nice quotes!
Love this
I am trying to get back into reading verse , I bought the Helen Gardener New Oxford Book of English Verse as a starting anthology , you mention the Ricks edition wondering both are worth having and if selections are vastly different ( I have read a lot of verse mostly American and classical poets )
I will get the Ricks IIL and compare then decide on getting it.
Quite a different selection
I got the Rick's from the library, different I will just read both put by ricks in last page of the previous edition.
Thanks, I have enjoyed both the second act and literary pod casts.
I have as a retirement act to get more people into reading and more youth at the opera. Lets see if I have the skill set, I am getting an early start so I am ready for it.
Literature as a friend or a mentor or a (constructive) critic…signposts in a life as much as any other embodied experience
“To read, then, is not to receive commentary; it is not to see art as a mirror of the world or the lamp of a soul. It is to live. It is another way of living, just as walking and eating and loving and talking are.”
Oh if only! It was all I ever really wanted to do and I have been long sorry that it did not count as something! I had no trouble imagining how Emily Dickinson could stay ensconced in her own room in her own family house and just write. I did not want to do and write; I wanted to do that and read.
"It was all I ever really wanted to do and I have been long sorry that it did not count as something!" LOL same! I so loved being told in this little reflection that "to read really is another way of living"...not something opposed to living...
John Madrid's Shklovsky worry upthread (i.e., that estrangement needs the remove even though you argue literature was never at a remove) may dissolve if we split the word 'commentary'. Arendt, drawing out Benjamin in the Illuminations introduction, keeps his distinction between commentary, which goes after a work's subject matter, and critique, which goes after its truth content: the once-obvious content has to go strange before the truth becomes legible. On that reading your commentary is nearly the reverse of Benjamin's, whose commentary stays bound to the work, close to the ornament on the wall you describe. Shklovsky's estrangement then belongs to the critique pole and your never-at-a-remove to commentary, so both can hold, because they name different motions. Which puts the pressure back on the reader: whether you are dwelling or estranging has less to do with choosing than with whether the content has gone strange for you yet.
I'm an incurable diary-writer like Pepys, but I've always seen that diary-writing as just an expansion of life. For me, life is even fuller, even richer, even more vivid in literature, and it would be hard to imagine life without it!
The Pepys sentence is the one I keep going back to. He has to stop living to write the diary, and live half-distracted so that there's a diary to write. That's the bill for treating everything as copy, and it can't be paid in instalments.
Reading this next to Shklovsky is odd, though. He says art exists to give back the sensation of life that habit has worn away. But his method is estrangement, so he needs the remove in order to restore the thing. You're arguing literature was never at a remove to begin with.
Both feel true, which is irritating.
humans love to story-tell. i think there's a parallel in here somewhere to a generous interpretation of internet culture, fueled by our compulsion to posting everything we think, do, and feel