Of Matthew Arnold’s habit
of meditating on the sayings
of great thinkers, a different one
each week, after writing them
down in his pocket diary,
Lionel Trilling wrote,
“It was as if he were obeying
as literally as he might
the commandment to fasten
the truth upon the door
of his house and upon his hand
and to set it as a frontlet
between his eyes.” Aha.
Welcome to the minyan, Matt.
2.
You ask what I like
about Trilling’s writing
and I pull out the Viking Portable Arnold
and turn to page twenty-five
of his introduction:
“He could join Goethe
in agreeing with Homer
that our life is a kind of Hell,
yet with Goethe he believed
that it must be lived
with as much pleasure as may
be dragged from it.”
It’s even better in prose.
-- DL
Vraiment?
Posted by: Tim | October 05, 2023 at 08:20 PM