Arnold, Goethe, and Homer
You ask what I like
about Trilling’s writing
and I pull out the Viking Portable Arnold
and turn to page twenty-five
of his introduction:
“He [Arnold] could join Goethe
in agreeing with Homer
that our life is a kind of Hell,
yet with Goethe he believed
that it must be lived
with as much pleasure as may
be dragged from it.”
It’s even better in prose.
DL
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