October 1, 1947
The Brontës: A Centennial Observance (Reconsiderations VIII)
When Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights appeared in 1847, they were widely denounced as coarse, immoral, and subversive. Later Mrs. Humphrey Ward and the Bronte Society came to cherish the […]
October 1, 1947
Goodness and Darkness of a Poet: Letters by Rainer Maria Rilke
[The text which follows is based on a selection and arrangement of letters written by Rilke on his travels just before World War I and now translated into English. They […]
October 1, 1947
Temptations of St. Yvor
The same judgments of taste can be maintained by people of very different beliefs. But just as obviously, the more deeply any such judgment involves us the more powerfully it […]
October 1, 1947
“Adapted from the French”
Nobody wants to be considered a mere translator. If you have always wanted to be a creative writer without ever quite managing it, you may translate something from the French, […]
October 1, 1947
Poetry: II, the Final Cause
1. Sentiments of All Sizes In Antony’s speech there is quite a cluster of substantival objects for affections; the well-known mantle, the vision of Caesar resting after his battle with the […]
October 1, 1947
On the Agenda of Political Theory (Post-War Stock-Taking IV)
An Ohioan is said to have boasted that there were more colleges in his State than on the whole European continent. In the same spirit one might observe that there […]
July 1, 1947
Movie Letter: Charlie Verdoux
After Sarah Bernhardt, no artist in any medium has received so much expertly qualified adulation in the last hundred years as Charlie Chaplin, and doubtless Chaplin has been more universally […]
July 1, 1947
The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh
Mr. Evelyn Waugh’s seventh and latest novel, Brideshead Revisited, was fortunate in earning the approval both of the reading public and of the theologians. In England, The Tablet saw in […]
July 1, 1947
Two More Existentialists: Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel
The storm around existentialism rages mostly about Sartre and the French atheistic school — of whom even Heidegger is said to have said, “Mein Gott! Das hab’ ich nicht gewollt!” […]
July 1, 1947
Theatre Letter
Perhaps it is time to hand O’Neill over to the sociologists, along with Dreiser and Farrell. A concern with our generic weakness is proper to their discipline, and the critic […]
July 1, 1947
“Not Men”: A Natural History of American Naturalism
There have been too many unfruitful arguments over Naturalism in American fiction. Now that the movement has flourished for half a century, we can forget to attack or defend it, […]
July 1, 1947
Poetry: I. The Formal Analysis
For twenty or twenty-five years we have lived with a kind of literary criticism more intensive than a language has ever known. But a revulsion is setting in against it. […]