The Sacred Wood

The writer of present essay (1920/1950) once committed himself to the statement that, "The poetic critic is criticizing poetry in order to create poetry."

The two latter have gusto, but gusto is no equivalent for taste; it depends too much upon the appetite and the digestion of the feeder.

A man of ideas needs ideas, or pseudo-ideas, to fight against.

In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We can not refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition". At most, wee employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of so-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional". Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. 

If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archaelogical reconstruction.

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

From the point of view of literature, the drama is only among several poetic forms. The epic, the ballad, the chanson de geste, the forms of Provence and of Tuscany, all found their perfection by serving particular societies.

The Elizabethan Age in England was able to absorb a great quantity of new thoughts and new images, almost dispensing with tradition, because it had this great form of its own which imposed itself on everything that came to it.

Consequently, the blank verse of their pays accomplished a subtlety and consciousness.

Qua work of art, the work of art can not be interpreted. There is nothing to interpret. We can only criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other works of art; and for "interpretation" the chief task is the presentation of relevant historical facts which the reader is not assumed to know.

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative". In other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion. Such that when external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

English criticism is inclined to argue or persuade rather than to state. Instead of forcing the subject to expose himself, these critics have left in their work an undissolved residuum of their own good taste, which, however impeccable, is something that requires our faith.

It is important that the artist should be highly educated in his own art; but his education is one that is hindered rather than helped by the ordinary processes of society which constitute education for the ordinary man.

Without doubt, the effort of the philosopher proper, the man who is trying to deal with ideas themselves, and the effort of the poet, who may be trying to realize ideas, can not be carried on at the same time.