The Twentieth Century Saw An Amazing Development

A Public That Tries To Do Without Criticism, And Asserts That It Knows What It Wants Or Likes, Brutalizes The Arts And Loses Its Cultural Memory. Art For Art's Sake Is A Retreat From Criticism Which Ends In An Impoverishment Of Civilized Life Itself.

Work, As We Usually Think Of It, Is Energy Expended For A Further End In View; Play Is Energy Expended For Its Own Sake, As With Children's Play, Or As Manifestation Of The End Or Goal Of Work, As In "playing" Chess Or The Piano. Play In This Sense, Then, Is The Fulfillment Of Work, The Exhibition Of What The Work Has Been Done For.

It Is Clear That All Verbal Structures With Meaning Are Verbal Imitations Of That Elusive Psychological And Physiological Process Known As Thought, A Process Stumbling Through Emotional Entanglements, Sudden Irrational Convictions, Involuntary Gleams Of Insight, Rationalized Prejudices, And Blocks Of Panic And Inertia, Finally To Reach A Completely Incommunicable Intuition.

Read Blake Or Go To Hell, That's My Message To The Modern World.

One Of The Most Obvious Uses Of Literature, I Think, Is Its Encouragement Of Tolerance... Bigots And Fanatics Seldom Have Any Use For The Arts, Because They're So Preoccupied With Their Beliefs And Actions That They Can't See Them Also As Possibilities.