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Show To Get a Wider, Clearer View of the World of Art and Letters By DR. CLIFFORD SMYTH, in International Book Reviw. I To get a wider, clearer view of the world of art and letters in the midst of which we are living, it is well to have one's feet firmly planted on that substratum of thought and creative achievement vaguely called the Classic Past. A generation without this foundation to rest upon, while it may, on occasion, touch the nobler heights of eloquence and beauty, will inevitably squander much of its strength and enthusiasm in the pursuit of futilities. No one can deny this stabilizing value of the literary tradition coming to us as an inviolable and supreme heritage. But there is such a thing as being weighed down, weakened, both individually in-dividually and collectively, by the sheer magnitude of an inheritance; and it is this oppressive influence descending to us from a generous past that, if permitted to go unchecked, becomes a veritable "tyranny of the classic." Merely to rebuild the old is a mark of this enervating tyranny, a peculiarity belonging to every age of literary sterility. To build new and vaster structures on the old, however, is a v;ry different matter. That is the process and the inspiration of the true Augustans, the emancipating sign of a vital, forward-looking literature, an exercise in intellectual freedom that is bound to advance the conquests con-quests of the creative mind in unexplored yet fertile regions. |