"Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance. Both were poets, but outside the literary fashions of their time. Both felt that among the poets of their time was an absorption in literary manners, fashions and techniques which separated the line of the writing from that of religious truth. Both felt that the modern situation imposed on them the necessity to express truth by means of a different kind of poetic writing from that used in past or present. Both found themselves driven into writing in a way which their contemporaries did not understand or respond to yet was inevitable to each in his pursuit of truth. Here of course there is a difference between Hopkins and Lawrence, because Hopkins in his art was perhaps over-worried, over-conscientious, whereas Lawrence was an instinctive poet who, in his concern for truth, understood little of the problems of poetic form, although he held strong views about them."

Stephen Spender Literature See all quotes by Stephen Spender →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Stephen Spender

“Stephen Spender, Toady: Was there any substance to his politics and art?" by Stephen Metcalf at Slate.com”

“A literary Life" : a review of Stephen Spender: The Authorised Biography by John Sutherland in The Washington Post”

“The immediate reaction of the poets who fought in the war was cynicism... The war dramatized for them the contrast between the still-idealistic young, living and dying on the unalteringly horrible stage-set of the Western front, with the complacency of the old at home, the staff officers behind the lines. In England there was violent anti-German feeling; but for the poet-soldiers the men in the trenches on both sides seemed united in pacific feelings and hatred of those at home who had sent them out to kill each other.”

“There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife.”

“Audio interview with Dick Cavett, at Paris Review”

“History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Let us get out of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours somehow have become shortened, into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something that the ancients called divine can be found and f…"

— Richard Jefferies

Literature1848–1887

#time

"I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way…"

— Malcolm Muggeridge

Journalism1903–1990

#time

"By the time the Muslims established their rule in the country the old inhabitants of the country, i.e. the Hindus, had lost their vitality to such an extent that they became incapable of dealing with …"

— Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Literature1897–1999

#writing

"Out of this conference I trust there may come a better appreciation of the necessary development of our life along these directions. They should be made to contribute to health, to broader appreciatio…"

— Calvin Coolidge

Politics1780–1853

#life