Let Us Think Of People As Starting

In Europe Life Retreats Out Of The Cold, And Exquisite Fireside Myths Have Resulted—balder, Persephone—but [in India] The Retreat Is From The Source Of Life, The Treacherous Sun, And No Poetry Adorns It Because Disillusionment Cannot Be Beautiful. Men Yearn For Poetry Though They May Not Confess It; They Desire That Joy Shall Be Graceful And Sorrow August And Infinity Have A Form, And India Fails To Accommodate Them.

Neanderthal Man Listened To Stories, If One May Judge By The Shape Of His Skull. The Primitive Audience Was An Audience Of Shock-heads, Gaping Around The Camp-fire, Fatigued With Contending Against The Mammoth Or Wooly-rhinoceros, And Only Kept Awake By Suspense. What Would Happen Next? The Novelist Droned On, And As Soon As The Audience Guessed What Happened Next, They Either Fell Asleep Or Killed Him.

The Novelist, Unlike Many Of His Colleagues, Makes Up A Number Of Word-masses Roughly Describing Himself (roughly: Niceties Shallcome Later), Gives Them Names And Sex, Assigns Them Plausible Gestures, And Causes Them To Speak By The Use Of Inverted Commas, And Perhaps To Behave Consistently.

It Is Now Only In Letters I Write What I Feel: Not In Literature Any More, And I Seldom Say It, Because I Keep Trying To Be Amusing.

I Have No Mystic Faith In The People. I Have In The Individual.