Saying it rightSaying it right
“It don’t sound right if it ain’t said right.” — Bill Withers, Still Bill
Category: Lit & Crit
What it takesWhat it takes
“It takes very little to make a character: a few indications of idiosyncracy, of deviation from type, are enough, for our practiced eyes will make up the larger patterns of which such indications can be read as parts.” — Kermode, “Necessities of Upspringing”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Historical appearancesHistorical appearances
“Sometimes it appears that the history of interpretation may be thought of as a history of exclusions, which enable us to seize upon [one] issue rather than on some other as central, and choose from the remaining mass only what seems most compliant.” — Kermode, “Carnal and Spiritual Senses”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Removing the solidsRemoving the solids
“We are always having to explain not the story, but why it counts.” — Kermode, “Instances of Interpretation”, The Art of Telling
Forward, into the pastForward, into the past
“The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” — Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
What’s that smell?What’s that smell?
“If we have only to say, ‘humanity stinks in our nostrils’ then silence is better, because we have heard that news.” — Saul Bellow, in a 1959 letter
Traversing the desert without a compassTraversing the desert without a compass
“Every work of art, even though it is produced by following an explicit or implicit poetic of necessity, is effectively open to a virtually unlimited range of possible readings, each of which causes the work to acquire new vitality in terms of one particular taste, or perspective, or personal performance.” — Umberto Eco, “The Poetics of the Open Work”
CocooningCocooning
“We do well to be thickly wadded with stupidity against an intolerable chaos.” — Frank Kermode, “Recognition and Deception”, The Art of Telling
Subliminality, TransliminalitySubliminality, Transliminality
“Greek tragedy was rooted in the empirical observation that there is no relationship between justice and suffering. Tragedy confronts us with our frailties and limits and the disastrous consequences of trying to exceed them. It advances a counter-intuitive thesis: that efforts to limit suffering through the accumulation of knowledge or power might invite more suffering.” — Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics
Our work is cut out for usOur work is cut out for us
“We must not seek to discover structures but to produce structurations.” — Kermode, “The Use of the Codes”, The Art of Telling
We pronounced it differently in grad schoolWe pronounced it differently in grad school
“Since men cannot be aware of everything, their words, speech and writing can mean something that they themselves did not intend to say or write…. Not occasionally only, but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author.” — Kermode in The Art of Telling, quoting Gadamer in Truth and Method (trans. from Wahrheit und Methode by Barden and Cumming), quoting and summarizing Chaldenius, who probably wrote in Latin as he was writing in the mid-18th century