Lascelles Abercrombie Quotes

• The poet’s business is not to describe things to us, or to tell us about things, but to create in our minds the very things themselves.

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• With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

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  Tags in Epic, Poetry, Decide

• Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

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• There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man’s general destiny.

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• The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

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• The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

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• The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

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• The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

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  Tags in Poet, Tradition, Narrower

• The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time.

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• The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

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• The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

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  Tags in Individuality, Morals, Heroic, Private

• That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

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• Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

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• No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

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• It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

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• It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

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• If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

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• For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality.

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• Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

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  Tags in Strictly, Epic, Exhibits, Symbolize

• By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

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Lascelles Abercrombie (23)

Birth:	9th January, 1881
Death:	27th October, 1938
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Critic, Poet

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