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creativity of chance in a formal setting, in grace rather than in works, in magical associations and coincidences and hence he believed in trying a gambler's throw with words and phrases.

...A striving for distinction and grandeur betrays itself and thereby defeats itself.

...Grace must descend unwilled and tidily, in literature as in life.

p3 New York Review of Books - Aug. 13 1981

Stuart Hampshire in review of Early Auden

Natsume Soseki The Three Cornered World (Kusa Makura - Grass Pillow)

1867-1916

(written in one week)

Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. p12

...looking at the landscape, it is as though

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you were looking at a picture unrolled before you, or reading a poem on a scroll. The whole area is yours, but since it is just like a painting or a poem, it never occurs to you to try and develop it, or make your fortune by running a railway line there from the city. You are free from any care or worry because you accept the fact that this scenery will help neither to fill your belly, nor add a penny to your salary, and are content to enjoy it just as scenery. This is the great charm of Nature, that it can in an instant, discipline men's hearts and minds, and removing all that is base, lead them into the pure unsullied world of poetry. p18

You are a poet while you are watching or reading, and are not actually involved. p19

In short, it will be just like standing in front of a picture, watching painted figures rush about excitedly. Three feet away