marți, 6 mai 2014

retorting

'...if I said his beard was not
cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is call'd the Retort
Courteous. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would
send me word he cut it to please himself. This is call'd the Quip
Modest. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment.
This is call'd the Reply Churlish. If again it was not well cut,
he would answer I spake not true. This is call'd the Reproof
Valiant. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This
is call'd the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the Lie
Circumstantial and the Lie Direct....

vineri, 8 iunie 2012

Nothing seemed to be “Greek”

Hence the tendency of this incurious and incompetent majority is to ignore the existence of a difficulty which they are unable to appreciate, and to rid themselves of the embarrassment of having to recognise and admit the poetic quality of a vast amount of the new poetry of the day by the short method of declaring that it differs from the genuine article in the presence or absence of some quality which they would find it mighty troublesome to define. Of course, if a man can see no difference between the so-called “minor” poetry of to-day and the “minor” so-called poetry of half, or even a quarter, or a century ago, there is no more to be said. If he does not feel that to descend from the great poets of the later Victorian Era to the dozens of others who are next to them in rank, seems little more to-day than descending from the summit of a mountain to one of its lower yet still lofty slopes; whereas to make that descent a generation ago was “to feel as if you had been kicked down a long flight of steps and had alighted in the Poets’ Corner of an obscure provincial newspaper”