Literary Critics

"The young king [Charles VI of France] had never been subjected to any discipline nor roughed up by the slightest study. He knew nothing other than what he might have learned by conversing in the courts; half enough to acquire a very light set of ideas and common notions, to form the gracefulness of manners and to procure that certain nobility and affability of character that was noted in Charles VI, and for which the monarch whose reign was the most everlasting scourge that ever afflicted France, had the ridiculous of Beloved. But no positive knowledge, neither of science, nor of administration, nor of politics, nor of religion had, on the contrary, been acquired by him. (vol. XII, chapter XXI, pp. 8-9)"

"Political economy is perhaps the only science whose immediate object is the universal beneficence and prosperity of men; because it is it that claims to teach the Government how it can preserve and increase the wealth of nations; encourage agriculture, from which abundance will arise; make trade flourish, which will divide the goods of the earth among its inhabitants according to their industry; perfect the arts, which will multiply the enjoyments of men, by making the progress of all the other sciences tend to their advantage. [...] A science which is announced as having as its aim the prosperity of all men becomes almost an object of derision if it is enclosed in a vain theory, the application of which is never undertaken. Such is perhaps the fate of Political Economy today. [...] Certainly, one of the great causes of their neglect of theories which could have increased their enlightenment would be found in the character of the men of government; but since we cannot expect them to be sensitive to the criticism of men of letters, or to submit with docility to the lessons that are claimed to be given to them, it is a question here of seeking the faults of the writings on Political Economy, and not theirs, whether we want to increase the influence of political theories on Governments, and bring them closer to their purpose."

"J. C. L. Simondo de' Sismondi, History of the French, vol. XII, Swiss typography, Capolago, C.E.1838."

"J. C. L. Simondo Sismondi, History of the Italian republics of the middle centuries, translation from the French, Volume I, Italy, C.E.1817."

"На відміну від Петра І, який «прорубав» Російській імперії «вікно» в Європу, Україні цього не потрібно було робити, бо вона вже була Європою. Проте в якийсь момент цей зв'язок був забутий."

"Comedy was implicit in the manner in which she [Jane Austen] told her story. Her irony, her delicate ruthless irony, was of the substance of her style. It never obtruded itself; sometimes it only glinted out in a turn of phrase. But it was never absent for more than a paragraph; and her most straightforward piece of exposition was tart with its perfume."

"That David Cecil understands the work of Shakespeare very thoroughly, and cares for it deeply, I can testify not only from many conversations we have enjoyed through the years, but from the memory of lectures he has given at Oxford. A quarter of century ago, he gave a course on Shakespeare's English historical plays which brought them to life for me as no other teacher had ever succeeded in doing."

"Good literary criticism enhances my pleasure. I read David Cecil with delight, whether on Hardy, Cowper, or the Early Victorian Novelists. The sine qua non here is still Wuthering Heights: it has the rugged but certain strength of a Beethoven symphony."

"F. R. Leavis is more direct in The Great Tradition (1948), which is among other things a running diatribe against Janeite extraordinaire, Lord David Cecil. Leavis dignifies Austen as well as the great tradition of English fiction she originated by insisting on her moral seriousness, and accordingly, the leisured amateurism of Janeites – with their fondness for entertainment, performance and comedy – is noxious to him. His class-based attack upon Lord David, which includes charges of decadence, aestheticism, over-sophistication and evil, contains a homophobically charged gender component as well, for when Leavis casts aspersions on Lytton Strachey and the culture of Bloomsbury, he is aiming to taint Lord David by association."

"His first book, The Stricken Deer, was at the same time a searching analysis of its tragic subject, the poet Cowper, and a vivid evocation of a particular phase of English life. Thus it already reveals his characteristic blend of interests. As a biographer, he has sought to bring out the unique individuality of human beings; to render the very essence of a Thomas Gray or a Max Beerbohm, a Caroline Lamb or a Dorothy Osborne. But he never neglects for long that larger social and spiritual context into which even the quietest of lives is interwoven."

"To my mind one of his finest achievements in the field of literary criticism is his theory of Emily Brontë's basic intention in Wuthering Heights. By the house and household of Hindley or filched from him by the villain Heathcliff – she means to represent the storm, the aberration from normal human nature. Whereas Thrushcross Grange, in spite of its many vicissitudes, embodies the calm, the restoration of order out of chaos, which wins in the end, after and indeed before Heathcliff's death... Emily's sympathies may have been with the storm rather than the calm, and I think they were; but it was left to David Cecil to discern the broad fundamental contrast between the two worlds of Wuthering Heights."

"Lord David's artistry has fullest play wherever the human element rules supreme, as in his masterly treatment of the relationship between the young Queen and her first Prime Minister. And since this relationship happens to have been perhaps the most significant aspect of Melbourne's Premiership, the book qualifies as an outstanding political biography as well as a moving human portrait."

"What is the secret of his critical gift that distinguishes it from others? Partly, I think, his individual approach, which is easy to recognize but hard to define, because it combines the qualities of the professional and the amateur. Professional in its seriousness, is technical proficiency and its regard for the subject; amateur (in the original sense) of loving or liking the subject too much to let himself be bound by hard-and-fast rules of treatment... [H]is love of literature is too strong a thing to be forced into the channel of a single theme. It overflows its banks for the mere pleasure of it – and as all his readers know, to give pleasure is one of his main objects in writing. Writing without pleasure, given and received, is dead: it is one of the essential differences between art and science."

"By choosing to write in a typically modern kind, the imaginative biography, he has acknowledged the stimulus of its inaugurator, Lytton Strachey. But Strachey may have sometimes sacrificed truth to literary effect; in contrast, David Cecil is exact and scrupulous. And if his predecessor's tone tended to be one of mockery, his own astringency is mitigated with humour, and his irony with charity. The compassionate spirit of his writing is in his case undoubtedly inspired by his lifelong attachment to the Christian faith."

"Their elaborate manners masked simple reactions. Like their mode of life their characters were essentially natural; spontaneous, unintrospective, brimming over with normal feelings, love of home and family, loyalty, conviviality, desire for fame, hero-worship, patriotism. And they showed their feelings too. Happy creatures! They lived before the days of the stiff upper lip and the inhibited public school Englishman. A manly tear stood in their eye at the story of a heroic deed... They were equally frank about their less elevated sentiments. Eighteenth century rationalism combined with rural common sense to make them robustly ready to face unedifying facts. And they declared their impressions with a brusque honesty, outstandingly characteristic of them."

"The eighteenth century was the age of clubs; and Whig society itself was a sort of club, exclusive, but in which those who managed to achieve membership lived on equal terms; a rowdy, rough-and-tumble club, full of conflict and plain speaking, where people were expected to stand up for themselves and take and give hard knocks. At Eton the little dukes and earls cuffed and bullied each other like street urchins. As mature persons in their country homes, or in the pillared rooms of Brook's Club, their intercourse continued more politely, yet with equal familiarity. While their House of Commons life passed in a robust atmosphere of combat and crisis and defeat."

"We got on extremely well; I thought he was wonderful; the most agreeable, intelligent charming man I had met in my life... We used to see each other every day, and we talked for about eight hours every day. Endlessly... He was a very sharp delineator of character. His vignettes were absolutely wonderful."

"His style, polished, urbane, slightly ironical throughout—in short, reminiscent of Strachey's, serves him supremely well as an instrument of character analysis and as a lens through which human passions and follies may be observed with Gibbonian detachment. The Young Melbourne (London, 1939) presented the subtly drawn picture of a young man whose own temperament, half animal vigor and hard common sense, half dreamy speculation and delicate sensibility, mirrored the transition from eighteenth- to nineteenth-century habits of thought and feeling."

"All who know him will agree that as a man he is characterized by his gay liveliness of mind, and his robust downrightness and common sense."

"Poetry is usually concerned with what is universal and unchanging in human life; novels necessarily with much that is local and ephemeral. Moreover poetry, almost like music, transcends the limitations of time by appealing to our emotions through our basic primitive sense of rhythm and harmony."

"I cannot recall a time when stories and rhymes and pictures and tunes were not for me the chief source of interest and pleasure in life. I stress the word pleasure. Pleasure has played a large part in my life; pleasure, solitary and sociable, carnal or spiritual; pleasure in the beauties of art and nature, in the enthralling variety of the human scene; and pleasure in jokes. Nothing has been included here, however interesting its subject matter, which does not also give me pleasure."

"England can best express her passionate will to peace by proposing something concrete to solve present difficulties. To show ourselves generous and sensible is in our own finest tradition. Cannot we, through the League, propose to offer Germany some mandate or devise other means to allow for her expansion? Even if it is only to gratify her desire for prestige, we are sufficiently proud of our prestige to sympathize with this desire. To refuse to do so is to show ourselves guilty of the same narrow, selfish nationalism that we deplore in the more reckless utterances of Fascist leaders."

"Let us announce to the League that we admit Germany's right to development and that we are prepared to concede something to procure it. An impartial commission might then draw up definite proposals. The Germans are far more likely to appreciate the advantage of the collective system if for once it is employed to assist them. They have learnt that they only get things by the threat of force: let us show them we can offer them something concrete by peaceful methods. May I repeat, except for the admittedly searching question of these Colonies, there is no reason why England and Germany should not live in perfect unity together. Let us keep calm and shape a policy in the light of the consoling truth."

"The Whig aristocracy was a unique product of English civilization. It was before all things a governing class. At a time when economic power was concentrated in the landed interest, the Whigs were among the biggest landowners: their party was in office for the greater part of the eighteenth century."

"That city Oxford] is one of the few supreme monuments of European history and civilization, the English equivalent of Florence or Venice."

"Since life to them was so secure and so pleasant, the Whig aristocrats tended to take its fundamental values very much for granted; they concentrated rather on how to live. And here again, their ideal was not an artless one. Their customs, their mode of speech, their taste in decoration, their stylish stiff clothes, are alike marked by a character at once polished and precise, disciplined and florid."

"Founded as their position was on landed property, the Whig aristocracy was never urban. They passed at least half the year in their country seats; and there they occupied themselves in the ordinary avocations of country life. The ladies interested themselves in their children, and visited the poor; the gentlemen looked after their estates, rode to hounds, and administered from the local bench justice to poachers and pilferers. Their days went by, active, out-of-door, unceremonious; they wore riding-boots as often as silk stockings. Moreover, they were always in touch with the central and serious current of contemporary life. The fact that they were a governing class meant that they had to govern."

"Politicians have prolonged deaths. In a way, they begin to die the moment they leave office, and their deaths continue thereafter as each of their identifying characteristics – this bold new drive, that exciting new initiative – goes up in smoke, borne away on the winds of change."

"Reticence is not just an artistic virtue, but a human one. It acknowledges the depth of meaning to be found in words unspoken."

"The parodist is particularly prone to see products of his imagination wherever he turns. When I read newspaper columnists, I find it hard to believe they are not making fun of themselves especially for me. Or did I, in a moment of forgetfulness, write that piece by Germaine Greer or this piece by Jeremy Clarkson? If so, how could I possibly have been so cruel?"

"Signs are a peculiarly British disease, the result of too many bureaucrats overseeing too little Empire. It may well be that Britons never ever, ever shall be slaves, but it can't be long before we are obliged to carry signs making it clear that this is the case."

"In this art of poetry, those who speak ill of Teika should be denied the protection of the gods and Buddhas and condemned to the punishments of hell."

"On this spring night the floating bridge of my dreams has broken away: and lifting off a far peak— a cloud-bank in empty sky."

"和歌に師匠なし。たゞ旧き歌をもつて師となす。心を古風に染め、詞を先達に習はば、誰人かこれを詠ぜざらんや。"

"I am wondering what gives you the right to be angry about our decision?"

"Hindutva really means, as understood by its advocates, conformity to the idea that India has primarily been a Hindu rashtra. It is not a religious philosophy or a social reform movement. It is a political philosophy based on cultural chauvinism, which insists that the non-Hindus of India accept their place as "minorities", whose safety and security will depend on their ability to earn the "goodwill of the majority". At the heart of the Hindutva ideology is the idea that the good of a majority should also be seen as the good for any minority, and that any assertion of minority rights is essentially a threat and a challenge to the political authority of the majority. Such minorities, therefore, are seen by the Hindutva advocates as anti-national and anti-social. Besides, any attempt by a minority to swell their numbers is seen by the Hindutva votaries as aggression. Hence, conversion to Christianity or a Hindu girl’s marriage to a Muslim or a Christian are seen as undesirable and provocative acts."

"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction"

"There's so much of this mixing occurring all over the world, and the political stability and openness to the transformations that are happening here are not in place yet. America allows it to happen, although not without pain."

"The sooner you learn that you have to be independent, that you are alone, and if there are people to help you it's a blessing, but it's not a given-I think this is the beginning of strength and wisdom."

"It is poetry, she says, that helped the rebellious and restless nomad find herself and her place. "Listening and telling my own stories," she says, "I am moving home.""

""Lament" is in some ways a praise song, a love poem to the English language, which, together with other languages like Spanish and Chinese, I continue to view as a wonderful achievement of the human species. The English language is capable of overcoming the separate identities that divide us even as it sometimes is deployed in erecting those separations."

"Familial relationships are never simple, are they? I think if you had a simple family life, you would have been very lucky. Love is so complicated. My father loved us, but he beat us! How do you come to terms with this very loving man who also was an abusive man?"

"Poetry is what has saved me through the years. I started writing when I was about nine. I discovered that I could go into a space where there is language-language that is mine, which is completely private and where I can do anything with it. I can curse at someone I cannot curse otherwise. I can create a space of beauty when all around me is poverty and deprivation. I can experience an uplifting of the spirit when all around me things are trying to pull me down. That act of writing the poem is the act that has centered me all my life."

"The political and social struggle for civil rights itself can transform the outsider into a citizen."

"I think that's what most writers do. They sit down and concentrate. It's as if you tap into your alpha waves. Otherwise, your mind is constantly wandering a the world calls out to it. That's ordinary, everyday consciousness. But I believe that the consciousness from which creativity comes is this intensity of focus that is the result of practice. Sylvia Plath wrote exercise poems. Writing poetry is itself a form of exercise, a discipline as much as it is a calling and an art. And a discipline always asks for exercise. I tell my students that you can't read about playing tennis in a book and then go out and be a good tennis player. You have to be out there hitting that ball and hitting it again and again to become the best tennis player possible. So if you want to be a good poet, you have to be working and working and working on the craft. Practice. Practice. Practice."

"Home and place are where we humans are grounded."

"(What does that say about the creative process of poetry?) I suppose it is an example of the inexplicability of the creative process. It works through ordinary feelings, familiar relationships, even when it sets itself a grand or historical challenge. But it seizes on what is hidden from everyday view, the strangeness in our dailiness that we need to make meaning of or for. The creative process is uncanny. It remains unknowable because it works with the not yet known. As for the conditions that support creativity, I know what I need as a poet. I need time-quiet time-and pen and paper."

"What I have found in life-it makes me very sad-is that one friend sustains me in one direction, another in another direction. What's missing are the friends who sustain one altogether."

"In a speech last year on women's liberation, I said how wonderful it was for us to be living in a period in which Dostoevski's statement that there was no such thing as an ugly woman was at last coming true. Of course I don't mean that absolutely and literally but I said it seriously in that speech because I was talking about the terrible Madison Avenue-contrived notions of sexual attractiveness that were imposed upon the girls of my generation and how dreadful it was to be made to think, as I did, that you had to conform to some impossible standard of advertising beauty in order to be in the sexual running at all. How can anyone of my generation do anything except celebrate the fact that this is no longer how things are?"

"In the forties Diana Trilling could write words that in their sharp moral focus may remind us of some Victorian prophet: "Ours being in all spheres such a 'know-how' culture, a civilization so brilliantly skilled in turning out anything it sets its hand to and yet so appallingly ignorant of what is worth making or to what use the things it makes should be put, we cannot be surprised that our literature, too, shows a marked ascendancy of craft over conscience. Probably there has never been a time when so many people wrote so 'well' as now but to such meager purpose; when, indeed, the emptier a novel's content, the surer its technical proficiency." If the reader thinks that sounds more like a critic than a book reviewer, he is right. And as a critic, Diana Trilling has range; she is not satisfied to leave literature sitting there uninterpreted in its fullest psychological, social, and political meaning, for she perceives that "literature is no mere decoration of life but an index of the health or sickness of society." It follows that "just as dictatorship, war, and all the other hideous phenomena of our political day undoubtedly answer a profound need in the modern mass-personality, so the debasement of our literary standards reflects a loss of standard throughout our lives.""