…the conquest of the public imagination by the arts, by “art as a way of life,” has reinforced the natural resistance of the mind to ordinary logic, order, and precision, without replacing these with any strong dose of artistic logic, order, and precision. The arts have simply given universal warrant to the offbeat, the intelligible, the defiant without purpose. The schools have soaked up this heady brew. Anything new, obscure, implausible, self-willed is worth trying out, is an educational experiment. Soon, the pupil comes to think that anything unformed, obscure, slovenly he may do is validated by art’s contempt for tradition, correctness, and sense.
[…]
Nothing is right by virtue of its origins, but only by virtue of its results. A stifling tradition is bad and a “great” tradition is good. Innovation that brings improvement is what we all desire; innovation that impoverishes the mind and the chances of life is damnable.
[…]
But nowadays we despise the very word cultivation. I admit that unweeded soil grows wondrous things, which nobody can predict. And these things have an abundance. But it would be a rash man who would call it a harvest.
—Jacques Barzun, “The Centrality of Reading,” The Written Word (Newbury House Publishers, 1971)
Showing posts with label order. Show all posts
Showing posts with label order. Show all posts
harmonious concept
When I speak of the poem, or often when I speak of the poem, in this book, I mean not merely a literary form, but the brightest and most harmonious concept, or order, of life; and the references should be read with that in mind.
—Wallace Stevens, the inscription in his Collected Poems in the copy given to Elias Mengel, dated June 6, 1955, shortly before Stevens died. Quoted on page 288 of Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, an oral biography by Peter Brazeau.
—Wallace Stevens, the inscription in his Collected Poems in the copy given to Elias Mengel, dated June 6, 1955, shortly before Stevens died. Quoted on page 288 of Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, an oral biography by Peter Brazeau.
best word order
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, 'prose = words in their best order; — poetry = the best words in the best order'
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1 (1885), collected by Henry Nelson Coleridge.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1 (1885), collected by Henry Nelson Coleridge.
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