Hero-worship

The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity. The omniscient historian would display the masterpieces, their causes and their inter-relation. The study of literature is hero-worship. It is a refinement, or, if you will, a perversion of that primitive religion.

Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1952; 1910), p. 7.

Democracy and Literature

Le gouvernement démocratique est par sa nature, le plus favorable aux lettres: c’est pourquoi les sciences fleurirent à Athènes et à Rome, et se sont produites en grand à Londres. Si elles furent cultivées avec un rare succès dans l’ancienne Égypte, si elles le sont encore dans notre France, c’est qu’il peut y avoir des monarchies, où les abus de la domination étant proscrits, la liberté se montre avec tous ses avantages.

Democratic government is by its very nature the most favourable to belles-lettres : that is why the sciences flourished in Athens and Rome, and have flourished in London. If they were cultivated with rare success in ancient Egypt, if they are still cultivated in our France, it is because there can be monarchies where the abuses of domination are outlawed and liberty reveals all its advantages.

Jean Blanchet, L’homme éclairé par ses besoins (Paris: Durand le Neveu, 1764), p. 303. My translation.

Literature is the Sum of its Discoveries

V.S. Naipaul, Literary Occasions: Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), p. 39:

Literature is the sum of its discoveries. What is derivative can be impressive and intelligent. It can give pleasure and it will have its season, short or long. But we will always want to go back to the originators. What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good.