T. S. Eliot

Name: The Sacred Wood — Introduction
Author: T. S. Eliot

The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

Summary

“The Sacred Wood — Introduction”, published in 1920, is a work by T. S. Eliot. It explores elements such as poetaster, Arnold and criticism.

Quotes from The Sacred Wood — Introduction (T. S. Eliot)

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ In a society in which the arts were seriously studied, in which the art of writing was respected, Arnold might have become a critic. How astonishing it would be, if a man like Arnold had concerned himself with the art of the novel, had compared Thackeray with Flaubert, had analysed the work of Dickens, had shown his contemporaries exactly why the author of Amos Barton is a more serious writer than Dickens, and why the author of La Chartreuse de Parme is more serious than either? ”

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T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ Chesterton, have succeeded so well in this latter profession of setting the house in order, and have attracted so much more attention than Arnold, that we must conclude that it is indeed their proper rôle, and that they have done well for themselves in laying literature aside.
Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own creative work are tempted into criticism. ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ Arnold is not to be blamed: he wasted his strength, as men of superior ability sometimes do, because he saw something to be done and no one else to do it. The temptation, to any man who is interested in ideas and primarily in literature, to put literature into the corner until he cleaned up the whole country first, is almost irresistible. ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes. [2] It is part of his business to help the poetaster to understand his own limitations. The poetaster who understands his own limitations will be one of our useful second-order minds ”

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T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of criticism could be done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. ”

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T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ TO anyone who is at all capable of experiencing the pleasures of justice, it is gratifying to be able to make amends to a writer whom one has vaguely depreciated for some years. The faults and foibles of Matthew Arnold are no less evident to me now than twelve years ago, after my first admiration for him ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ Poetry is not a formula which a thousand flappers and hobbledehoys ought to be able to master in a week without any training, and the mere fact that it seems to be now practised with such universal ease is enough to prove that something has gone amiss with our standards.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and volubility of syllables. ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ NOTE.—;I may commend as a model to critics who desire to correct some of the poetical vagaries of the present age, the following passage from a writer who cannot be accused of flaccid leniency, and the justice of whose criticism must be acknowledged even by those who feel a strong partiality toward the school of poets criticized:—
"Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth: if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ As for the first-order minds, when they happen, they will be none the worse off for a "current of ideas"; the solitude with which they will always and everywhere be invested is a very different thing from isolation, or a monarchy of death. ”

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Source: Wikisource

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood — Introduction (1920)

“ In Culture and Anarchy, in Literature and Dogma, Arnold was not occupied so much in establishing a criticism as in attacking the uncritical. The difference is that while in constructive work something can be done, destructive work must incessantly be repeated ”

T. S. Eliot

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Quotes from The Sacred Wood — Introduction (T. S. Eliot)

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