July 1, 1943
The Discourse of Music
It is at a late, almost fatal, stage of sophistication that men begin writing critically of their arts. Primitive man may be hardly less “creative” than he is practical, but […]
July 1, 1943
Pictorial Meaning and Picture Thinking
Professor Charles W. Morris, in his essay “Empiricism, Religion, and Democracy,” writes: Imagine a community of men living on a cell in the blood stream of one of us, but […]
July 1, 1943
John B. Flannagan, American Sculptor
Less than a year and a half ago, our country suffered the loss of its best contemporary sculptor. He had hardly entered on middle life and, with superb work behind […]
July 1, 1943
The Structure of Metaphor
Mr. Ransom in an editorial comment entitled “The Inorganic Muses” makes the following observation concerning metaphor: It has proved impossible, I think, to insist that metaphor is a mere expository […]
July 1, 1943
Bernard Shaw in Twilight
Not long ago, I was part of a gathering at which someone, seeing Hesketh Pearson’s recent biography on a table, turned the general conversation to the subject of Shaw.1 “Does […]
July 1, 1943
American Music (An English Perspective)
To attempt, from the European side of the Atlantic, any detailed criticism of American music would be, in view of the relative scantiness of our knowledge, as impertinent as it […]
July 1, 1943
Art Letter
May 1, 1943 Gerard De Nerval’s “épanchement du songe dans la vie réelle” is an apt comment on the current season, notable as it has been for the overflow of […]
April 1, 1943
Eliot’s Quartets
“. . . a white light still and moving.” In the course of an artist’s development certain phases may detach themselves and challenge comprehension as completed wholes. Eliot has rounded […]
April 1, 1943
Pure and Impure Poetry
Critics are rarely faithful to their labels and their special strategies. Usually the critic will confess that no one strategy—the psychological, the moralistic, the formalistic, the historical—or combination of strategies, […]
April 1, 1943
Thought and Sensibility
The fact that sensibility is a function of intelligence has important implications. It is popularly, and not alone popularly, believed that thought and feeling are mutually opposed, that we employ […]
April 1, 1943
Maxwell Anderson: A Criticism
To submit an adverse opinion on Mr. Anderson’s war play involves a very heavy responsibility. And yet it is a responsibility that must be faced. In Marxist terms, the fashionable terms […]
April 1, 1943
François Mauriac
François Mauriac belongs to the generation of French writers born between two other generations: the first, including Claudel, Gide, Proust, and Valéry, all of whom were born about 1870; and […]