Carolina QuotesThe poets of the last generation were extremely erudite, but their erudition was of the rather specialized type that passed as currency of the realm in a somewhat literary realm. About Darwin, Marx, Freud and Co., about all characteristically “scientific” or “modern” thinkers most of them concluded regretfully: “If they had not existed, it would not have been necessary to ignore them.” (Or deplore them.)
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“New Year Letter”, p. 56
- work
- Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
- year
- 1935
- locator
- p. 56
Cite this record
“The poets of the last generation were extremely erudite, but…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-109018CBA3. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/109018cba3
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One is forced to remember how far from "self-expression" great poems are — what a strange compromise between the demands of the self, the world, and Poetry they actually represent.