Sublime

from reading the Left-wing press you get the impression that the louder people yap about the proletariat, the more they despise its language.

Then the pendulum swung away from the frivolous notion that art is merely technique, but it swung a very long distance, to the point of asserting that a book can only be “good” if it is founded on a “true” vision of life. Naturally the people who believe this also believe that they are in possession of the truth themselves. Catholic critics, for

All forms of social solidarity were to be dissolved in favour of individualism, private property, personal responsibility, and family values. The ideological assault along these lines that flowed from Thatcher’s rhetoric was relentless.17 ‘Economics are the method’, she said, ‘but the object is to change the soul.’ And change it she did, though in

T. S. Eliot wrote almost a century ago about a phenomenon that he believed to be the product of the nineteenth century: “When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for

It’s a social movement, quintessentially romantic, the kind that recurs in times of real social crisis. The themes are always the same. A return to innocence. The invocation of an earlier authority and control. The mysteries of the blood. An itch for the transcendental, for purification.

Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king.

nous en étions là : l’opinion de quelqu’un était insupportable. C’était la posture désormais. Et aussi une violation extrême, absurde, de la liberté d’expression, tout comme les politiques réputées haïssables étaient détournées en immorales.