The Very Best Of All Merwin: I

The True Use Of Shakespeare Or Of Cervantes, Of Homer Or Of Dante, Of Chaucer Or Of Rabelais, Is To Augment One's Own Growing Inner Self. . . . The Mind's Dialogue With Itself Is Not Primarily A Social Reality. All That The Western Canon Can Bring One Is The Proper Use Of One's Own Solitude, That Solitude Whose Final Form Is One's Confrontation With One's Own Mortality.

I Think The Greek New Testament Is The Strongest And Most Successful Misreading Of A Great Prior Text In The Entire History Of Influence.

Shakespeare Is Universal.

The World Gets Older, Without Getting Either Better Or Worse And So Does Literature. But I Do Think That The Drab Current Phenomenon That Passes For Literary Studies In The University Will Finally Provide Its Own Corrective.

Socrates, In Plato, Formulates Ideas Of Order: The Iliad, Like Shakespeare, Knows That A Violent Disorder Is A Great Order.