Lascelles Abercrombie

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#artistic #communities #creation #individual #mind

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#difficult #hearers #keep #more #readers

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#beauty #difficulty #gravest #important #making

An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#continuous #epic #heroic #into #lays

But the development of human society does not go straight forward; and the epic process will therefore be a recurring process, the series a recurring series - though not in exact repetition. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#does #epic #exact #forward #go

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#constantly #epic #epic poetry #form #general

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#attitude #cannot #epic #epic poetry #exhibits

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#displays #expression #first #individuality #natural

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#epic #epic poetry #fall #poetry #species

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#ever #founded #his #knows #only