The World Does Not Get To Be

The Morality Of Scholarship, As Currently Practiced, Is To Encourage Everyone To Replace Difficult Pleasures By Pleasures Universally Accessible Precisely Because They Are Easier.

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.

The Very Best Of All Merwin: I Have Been Reading William Since 1952, And Always With Joy.

No Poem, Not Even Shakespeare Or Milton Or Chaucer, Is Ever Strong Enough To Totally Exclude Every Crucial Precursor Text Or Poem.

In Fact, It Is Shakespeare Who Gives Us The Map Of The Mind. It Is Shakespeare Who Invents Freudian Psychology. Freud Finds Ways Of Translating It Into Supposedly Analytical Vocabulary.