As I remember him : the biography of R.S / by Hans Zinsser.

  • Hans Zinsser
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: As I remember him : the biography of R.S / by Hans Zinsser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    over obstacles of reality into meadows and covers of illusion. Nor is it the material that matters — whether it be the old stirrings of nature and love, or war, or whether it deals with the tragedies and complexities of human fate. Tire sole criterion for me is whether it can sweep me with it into emotion or il¬ lusion of beauty, terror, tranquillity, or even (Herder to the contrary) disgust,— as in Baudelaire, — so long as it arouses fundamental feelings or reflections which, encountered with¬ out the poet, might have passed half realized, like a tongue of flame or a flying leaf. For the poet arrests emotions at their points of greatest supportable heat, just short of the melting point as it were, and can hold in that perfect state, permanent in his words and metres, those feelings and comprehensions which pass too quickly to be held through the minds of ordinary men. The poet imprisons them in words or color or marble, so that we lesser men can contemplate them and recognize in them their own hearts and minds/7 This was the last serious conversation I had with R.S.
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