Status Updates From English Literature, A Surve...

Burgess on the bad side of Shelley: 'yet one is sometimes repelled by a kind of spinelessness, a kind of 'death-urge' ... a kind of adolescent spirit, self-pitying, over-intense, as immature as a rash of acne or of religious mania.' Oh the barbs of an experienced critic...

Glad to see the back of the 18th century as always but have learn some interesting things from the period that I wouldn't give a chance to if it were not for this writer.

'Philosophers, like scientists, want to build up a system; but their system attempts to go much further than that of science. The scientist makes a limited enquiry in terms of his own subject: the chemist is only concerned with the constitution of matter, the psychologist with the nature of mind; but the philosopher desires a system which can take in the whole of experience.'

"The midwife placed her hand on his thick skull, / With this prophetic blessing: Be thou dull." Never quite liked Dryden until now.

Burgess gets Donne: 'he approached God with the passion he had formerly shown to women; he addresses Christ with the fierceness of a lover. Just as his character seems made up of opposites, so does his verse. When he is deepest in love with living flesh it is then he sees the skeleton beneath it.'

one of the times I wonder to myself why did I choose to start the 2022 with such heavy/serious books that I cannot but read slowly?