THE YOUNG WRITER, PRESENT, PAST, AND FUTURE

BY STEPHEN SPENDER

Reprinted from MICHIGAN ALUMNUS QuARTERLY REVIEW August 8, 1953, Vol. LIX, No. 21 The Writer's Calling Endures, Though the Response A1ay Vary

THE YOUNG WRITER, PRESENT, PAST. AND FUTURE

By STEPHEN SPENDER

N THIS, the occasion of giving the tasting the first fruits-I may as well tell annual Hopwood Awards, a few you that, economically speaking, being a O of you must be thinking about the writer is very like being a gambler. The first step in your career signified by receiv­ story or article that earns you $10 might ing an award. In a rather varied life, one equally well earn you $1,000. Sometimes of the things I have never done is to win you are paid a few pennies for a review, a literary prize. My first duty is to congrat­ sometimes enough to keep you for a month. ulate you on an achievement that fills me And what is true of the economics of the with admiration. Rut I must add a word of thing is also true of reputation. Many warning, which you can attribute to sour writers living today who have great repu­ grapes if you wish. You only have to look tations were hardly known during the long at lists of Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, years when they were doing their best work. and the rest to realize how changeable-if Anyone who has lived as a writer for ?ot. £allible-is the judgment of literary twenty years or more knows too that one's Junes. stock goes up and down in what is a In a way of course, this is rather con­ fluctuating market of critical opinions. soling. To those of us-who are always in I mention these things in order to get a democratic majority-who have not won them out of the way. The point really is prizes, it shows that we may be better than that, although writers have to get started you who have. There is even more solid in one way or another with earning money consolation to be derived from reflecting and getting work published, these things that those of us who do not deserve prizes are irrelevant. When I say irrelevant, I may well win them, since the example of don't mean just that they don't matter; I many who have won them shows that in mean that part of the struggle of being a the past there has not always been an writer is to watch and to be on guard that absolutely necessary connection between they don't have relevance. To be a failure prize-winning and desert. can be discouraging. To be a success may Now that I'm on this aspect of the mean something much worse: that you feel literary career-of which you are today surrounded by people who want you to go on being one. Your publisher has sold fifty STEPHEN SPENDER., English poet and critic, whose thousand copies of your last book, and is 1953 Hopwood Lecture is presented here, is a graduate of University College, Oxford. He has published appalled when you bring in a manuscript of some eighteen volumes of essaYll and verse. His honors what may be a better book, but of which include a doctorate in letters from the University of he knows he can sell only two thousand Montpelier and honorary membership in the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He has been lecturing this copies. The more you are known the more year at the University of Cincinnati. you discover that you are in some mysterious 302 THE YOUNG WRITER 3°3 way arousing expectations in all sorts of people and behavior very different from individuals and groups of people who, those expected by the readers of his best­ since they read your work, feel that you selling novels. 1 became excited at his idea have a certain responsibility towards them. and pressed him to start writing this book Shortly before he died, the English which 1 felt sure would be his masterpiece.

STEPHEN SPENDER The English poet and critic who delivered the 1953 Hop'wood Lecture novelist, Sir Hugh Walpole, outlined to "No," he said, "I shall never write it." me the idea of a novel he wanted to write. "Why not?" "Because 1 could not write it It was on a subject very close to his heart, in a way which would please my best-selling which he felt he understood better than public. It would have to be produced in a others. From the way he spoke it was clear small edition, for not more than two thou­ that this unwritten book was the one work sand readers. And after selling one hun­ in which he could portray his realest ex­ dred thousand copies of each of my novels, perience of life. However, it would describe 1 could not endure that." THE QUARTERLY REVIEW

We can assume, I think, that anyone he found himself in another world, even who simply wants to sell a lot of copies of more real to him, of Shakespeare's A Mid­ his books will-if he knows this already­ Ju'mmer Night's Dream. In another letter, plan his career accordingly. He will not be written when he was nursing his brother, a writer, but a businessman who is dealing he complains that the identity of Tom with words as other people deal with any Keats presses on him unendurably, a pres­ other mass-produced commodity. He will sure he resents not out of selfishness but have no illusions, so he will not suffer at because he felt responsible to his world of the end of his life from the kind of heart­ poetry more even than to his brother. There break which makes Sir Hugh Walpole-if was also something about his love for a failure in his own art-the subject of a Fanny which seemed to him the surrender great biography by Rupert Hart-Davis, of his poetic world to a human one. which has recently been published. The next thing we note about the young Now that the decks have been cleared Keats is that he wanted convivial friends of success and failure, what are the legiti­ who shared his love of poetry, provided mate needs of the young writer? It's bet­ that they did not press on him too much ter, I think, to put the question in a form with their personalities. When he was in which it can be examined by examples. twenty or so, he allowed himself to think \Vhat did the young writer of the past that with Reynolds, Benjamin Robert need, as the pre-conditions necessary to his Haydon, Cowden Clarke, Leigh Hunt and gift? the rest, he had found a circle of enlight­ ened people who recognized the same po­ T ET us consider for instance, John Keats etic values as he did. He wanted to belong L and Ernest Hemingway, two young to a group of friends who correspond very men; one in London at the beginning of much to the group of French writers the nineteenth and the other in Paris at who will frequent the same Parisian cafe. the beginning of this century. Perhaps, in America today, this function What of Keats? Well, first of all, he of literary companionship is being fulfilled wanted to write poetry for no reason ex­ rather self-consciously, and with not cept that he wanted to write poetry. His enough frivolity to accompany the serious­ concept of poetry was formed from reading ness, by the creative writing courses. Spenser, Shakespeare, and, later, Milton. Brandy and coffee ought to be compul­ To him, poetry was the means of entering sory at all the creative writing seminars. the world of other poets and then creating The next thing Keats wanted was to his own poems. Besides being a poet, he was chart his course among the currents of lit­ a medical student, he was devoted to his erature and thought in his time. He dis­ brother Tom (whom he nursed through liked Pope's poetry, which he regarded the consumption that he himself was very as mere versification. He had very clearly soon to die of), to his sister, Fanny Keats, developed ideas of his own about the world and in the last months of his life, to Fanny of pure imagination which poetry should Brawne, with whom he fell so hopelessly create. He found precedents for his con­ in love. cept of poetry in Shakespeare. He was Poetry was for him a separate world critical, though admiring, of Wordsworth. from the real world of his medical studies, He was a not very generous rival of Shel­ his brothers and sisters, even his love. Thus, ley. He came to sneer at Leigh Hunt, in one of his letters he describes an occasion and he grew out of the circle of his Hamp­ when the classroom or laboratory where stead friends into the isolation of genius. he was studying suddenly disappeared, and Although he wrote that he had never THE YOUNG WRITER 30 5 allowed a shadow of public thought to en­ doubtless drive out the china and chippen­ ter his work, Keats was not without opin­ dale, just as much as the world of A Mid­ ions. He was what we would call a liberal. summer Nighrs Dream came dancing He loved freedom (by which he meant down on a beam of sunlight into the room Liberal Freedom) and hated Napoleon where Keats was learning medicine and and the British government of his day. made him forget the lecture. Now let us turn to the young Heming­ Given the fact that he was trying to make way in Paris a hundred years later. His novels out of life and not out of other attitudes are less literary than those of novels, Hemingway also had his circle. Keats. He would deny, I think, having Just as Keats, without very much success, read much of anything, though he would looked in Hampstead for friends who admit to a great admiration for Stendhal. shared his passion for the arts, Hemingway But don't let us be put off by his anti-liter­ was looking for people who shared his ary pose without examining it more closely. passion for- the real-which was the quality He is not bookish, but he cares immensely he wanted to put into his novels. They about writing well, and takes a conscious turned out to be bull-fighters, soldiers at pride in his use of words. Despite his pride, Caporetto and in the front line at Madrid, he goes humbly to Gertrude Stein and and Americans in Paris. But the real Hem­ learns all he can from her about adding ingway no more belongs to his tough circle word to word with as much thought as if than Keats to his Hampstead literati. The one were making a mosaic, and each word ultimate image we have of Hemingway a separate stone. is of the old man left fighting the fish of Thus, the difference between the literary his art alone. conscience of Hemingway and that of Keats This is, indeed always, the situation of may be the difference between romantic the artist with his vocation, pursuing his poet and modern novelist rather than that vision. All the same, he probably needs to between man of literature and hairy­ start off from the fertilizing group of his chested philistine. Hemingway knows that friends who--perhaps only because they the roots of the novel are not in literature are generous and young, and do not them­ but in life. Although he can learn how to selves know as yet what they really want­ make sentences from Miss Stein and how form a magic circle round his youth. to write about a battle from the description Hemingway, like Keats, fought his battle of Fabrice on the battlefield of Waterloo among the ideas of his time. When he was with which The Charterhouse of Parma lion-hunting in Africa he was also carrying opens-he sees that beyond learning how on a polemic against Aldous Huxley, who to write his own novels from other writers had reproached him with being anti-intel­ such a novelist must avoid literature like lectual. He showed pretty well, I think, the plague. His source-books are the con­ that the intellect is a matter of passion and versations of soldiers and drunks, the lonely not of books. A few asides on his work about thoughts of fishermen and hunters. Goya and E1 Greco are impressive enough Just as much as Keats, Hemingway had to make the reader realize that a writer then his special vision of a world of his with an understanding of painting does imagination, a world in which love and not need to show it all the time. Then, drinks and fights and scenery were more just as Keats without ever being what is real than, say, intellectual conversation, called "political" wrote his sonnet to salute journalism, money, and stuffed shirts. In Leigh Hunt when he had been imprisoned a drawing room his picture of prize fights, for defamation by the British Government hunting in Africa, and war in Spain would of that time, Hemingway took up the THE QUARTERLY REVIEW attitudes of an unpolitical man who loved much of what he read as he required for freedom to the politics of the 1930's. For the purpose of his writing. This is all a Whom the Bell Tolls corresponds in his writer needs and it may be very little or it work to Keats's sonnet celebrating Leigh may be a great deal. With Dante and Mil­ Hunt when he was sent to prison. And ton it was a lot. A writer should think of all through his work there is a preoccupa­ every experience (and this includes the tion with the relationship of those charac­ books he reads and the paintings he sees) ters who are felt to be real because they in terms of the life which he is going to have done real things--or because they put into his work. He should be as much have lived close to the values of nature­ on guard against the corruption which with the unreality of the politicians who comes from excessive sophistication and a direct the soldiers, the businessmen who too great load of learning as he is against have more power than the artists and the any debasement of his gifts. Rimbaud ad­ fishermen. For him freedom is the struggle vised writers to throwaway dictionaries and of real life to assert itself against meddling reinvent words, and Blake thought that and self-interested authority. the forms in which past poets wrote be­ came the shackles of new poetry. D. H. COULD go on multiplying examples to Lawrence, who was probably the most pro­ I illustrate that the young writer is some­ found critic of modern values in this cen­ one with a mysterious sense of his own vo­ tury, was utterly opposed to all the intel­ cation, and a vision of reality which he lectual tendencies of our time, read little wishes to communicate: to show, too, that in of his esteemed contemporaries, and not his youth he can benefit by the magic circle very selectively from the past. of those who are touched to sympathy by None of these writers was an ignoramus, him, perhaps more for what he is than for but all saw the necessity of approaching what he does. His friends believe in him knowledge and theories about literature and they take his work on trust. Later on with the same lively precaution as you they become interested in other things­ would enter a forest full of poison ivy and they cannot share his vocation-and he snares. They saw that intellectual life is not learns to be alone. But his youth has been a passive process like hypnosis which you watered by their sympathy. submit to, hoping that you will be entranced He must certainly care for his craft as into doing something beyond your natural a writer. He must choose other writers who powers. You have to meet the intellectual are guardian angels from the past whose work of others with your own powers, ac­ works seem to be fighting on the side of cording to your capacity to cope with it, his unborn poems or novels. What I very and not be overpowered by it. Intellectual much doubt, though, is whether he should life for a writer should be a struggle of all know more than this. One of the things that the forces of his life with other minds many modern writers perhaps suffer from which he can meet on equal terms. is intellectual indigestion. Weare told that So here we have that timeless creature, Shakespeare had small Latin and less the young writer, with his vocation, his Greek, and the number of works he is sup­ vision of what is real to him, his magic posed by scholars to have read would cer­ circle of friends, the struggle of his whole tainly not have filled even a small library. existence within the ideas, the movements What he knew is so perfectly absorbed and the history of his time. He is timeless, within his own genius that we are scarcely and yet he is a kind of animal who tries aware of his knowing it. to find the place within his time where he Shakespeare probably understood just so can best fulfill his gifts. He struggles to THE YOUNG WRITER

be received into the court of Queen Eliza­ be responsible towards anyone or anything beth Or Louis XIV, or to be patronized by again and he spits into the faces of the older some great aristocrat of the eighteenth cen­ generation. Under all these attitudes, he tury, or to achieve the independence of a maintains the sense of his vocation. What bourgeois living and working for himself in our time can the writer do, is the question in the nineteenth. He is a parasite, and he is asking, but by Hdoing" he means, often rather an ungrateful one. In her how can he write his novels or poems. The novel Orlando, Virginia Woolf describes the answers are always changing, and as the poet who comes to stay at Orlando's resi­ time-process of our civilization speeds up dence, where he charms everyone, and then they change from year to year with ever­ goes away to write a perfidious lampoon increasing rapidity. on Orlando and his friends. When he So the differences are less confusing when claims his right to middle-class inde­ we recollect that the writer adopts attitudes pendence, as poets did in the nineteenth for the sake of his writing. An attitude--or, century, it is in order to spit on the bour­ for that matter, a literary movement-is geois. He arrives as Rimbaud arrived in the simplified statement of the relationship Paris in 1870, puts his feet up on the table to his time which he adopts in order that of Madame Verlaine's clean dining room, he may best write his best work. Thus the takes out his pipe, smoking it upside down young writers at the beginning of the so that the hot ash falls onto her table­ French Revolution had to relate themselves cloth, and shoos away her lap-dog, with to two things in contemporary history, the expletive comment: "Les chiens sont which became one thing within their work. les liberaux." One was the changed attitude toward val­ But the position of the young writer ues which had been brought about by the differs according to the time in which he French Revolution, the other was the fact lives. His impossible behavior takes dif­ that their immediate predecessors were ferent forms according to whether he writing in a style which could not possibly emerges from the cocoon of his family in be the vehicle for the altered sensibility re­ 1450, 1550, 1650, 1750, 1850, or 1950, sulting from the change from aristocratic or whatever day of whatever year between values to democratic ones. These two things these dates. In 1800 he is a revolutionary became one imaginative life within the patriot, wild-eyed, unshaven, and influ­ colloquial manner of writing of Words­ enced by the self-dramatizing self-pity and worth, the romanticism of Keats. passion for freedom of Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. In 1900 he holds a lily in his hand, HAT is the writer's vision, though? is languid, tired, dissipated, and infinitely W With the poet it is his significant ex­ superior to the universe. In 1914 he perience expressed in a poetic idiom which marches onto the battlefields of Europe responds or is sensitive to the circumstances and with a song on his lips proclaims that of his time. The poet's ideas of what is most the world is about to be purified of ignoble valuable, because most living is experience, qualities. In 1916 he is the voice of the confront the world with his idiom of the youthful dead of both sides which hold no contemporary human situation. The novel­ hatred for one another. By 1920 he has ist illustrates, in his depiction of character, taken to alcohol and various other excesses, the struggle of individual human existence and he represents the naked, almost brutal within the circumstances of a particular assertion of his survival against a back­ historic period. The young man T olstoi ground of recently past death. He swears shows us a whole panorama of the circum­ that whatever else happens, he will never stances of individuals living through the 308 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW

Napoleonic wars. Although lVar and Peace about the position of the writer has sud­ is all, in a sense, a depiction of life, the denly become amorphous. What has been values of living are only realized at their clear for so long was his extreme individ­ most intense in moments of the lives of uality. The writer has for a hundred and particular characters. Moments of Natasha's fifty years regarded himself and been re­ vivid childhood, of Pierre Bezukhov's garded as an independent creator or critic changes of heart-most of all perhaps the within society who brought to it his own moment when Prince Andrew lies wounded vision or who attacked it from the point on the battlefield. The novel portrays the of view of a detached observer. For in­ struggle for the realization of life within stance, we think of Keats and the other ro­ the circumstances of living. If the condi­ mantics as being outside the materialism tioning circumstances are not truly imag­ of the industrial revolution. Perhaps they ined and portrayed within the work, then opposed the materialism of the nineteenth the life in the novel seems false; and if the century, or perhaps they added something circumstances are realized, then the work to life which made circumstances tolerable becomes a depressing exercise in what is and even justified modern civilization. called realism. Whichever it was they did, rightly or There is no way in which a writer can wrongly, we think of them as outside their cheat himself into having a greater aware­ society. The French poets, like Baudelaire, ness of life than his genius has given him. Verlaine, and Rimbaud, we think of as There are, however, circumstances and con­ still more savagely isolated individualists, ditions which can cheat him out of the possi­ who were antagonistic to all contemporary bility of realizing his gifts. It is more diffi­ values. We think, too, of the novelists cult to be a young writer at some periods either as being critics of Victorianism who than at others. There are some decades judged their age from a disinterested point when the mood of the time seems to permit of view or as truthful observers of char­ of a much wider realization of the values acter, who were able to indicate the points of living than others. In England the at which life acquires the greatest signifi­ Elizabethan age was certainly such a time. cance. Flaubert's The Sentimental Educa­ There are others when a great many writ­ tion, for example, is a scrupulous and exact ers work under circumstances where life study of the lives of a group of individuals itself seems weighed down and oppressed, against a background of history, and at the and yet the material development of so­ end we are able to measure the extent to ciety is so expansive and confident that which Frederic Moreau and the other char­ masterpieces are written. The Victorian Age acters have lived their lives, attained happi­ was such a period. But although nineteenth ness, suffered to some purpose, created century England was ebullient and expan­ beauty, or loved. sive, yet it is really the literature of France Today we suddenly find ourselves living in this period which tells us more of what in a world where it is very difficult to was happening to the spirit of man. think of the poet creating a unique vision "What is the position of the young writer like that of Keats, which will so enormously today?" That is the question at the back of enhance the value of living for his readers my mind all the time that I have been talk­ that his poetry will seem a system of the ing. For it seems to me that in certain ways imagination where "beauty is truth, truth this question is more difficult to answer than beauty," and nothing else need be added it has been for a great many years. to life. It is equally difficult to think of the The reason it is difficult to answer is novelist being an independent, detached that the one thing that previously was clear critic of society. We suddenly find that the THE YOUNG WRITER individual VISIons, which right up to the one who lives in the deep South had some time of the aesthetic movement could add very extraordinary and crazy relatives something so significant within art to the whom he is going to tell us about. Someone value of life that ordinary life itself seemed else had a very odd relationship with one scarcely worth living, have shrunk into of the masters at his preparatory school or private fantasies, childhood memories, at the military academy. A woman who squibs like Truman Capote's novel about was frustrated in her desire to become some people who decide to go and live in cultured never got to the Museum of a tree-or like Henry Miller's books in Modern Art, so she became a nympho­ which all his characters indulge themselves maniac, upset her family badly and was to the utmost in physical sensation and have finally taken away in a van. All these ex­ no philosophy or purpose beyond such periences can be original and it is possible indulgence. to write about them well, but they do not What has happened is that the idea that enhance the life "of the reader, and they do there are writers and other artists and sen­ not criticize the world in which we are sitive individuals who in some way can pre­ living. No amount of odd experience and serve an integrity and create beauty outside good writing and all the characters going the materialism of society, has suddenly mad can really get away from the fact been completely shattered. We may not that they are really just embroidered docu­ live in a totalitarian world, but a kind of mentary material. totalitarianization of the spirit has over­ In these circumstances, the young writer taken all of us. In a world where within a is tempted to abandon his artistic responsi­ matter of hours or days the whole of our bility-that is, his responsibility to do what civilization may be destroyed, or where if he knows he alone can do in the way he this does not happen we may find our alone can do it. On every side, there are minds the passive objects of political dic­ voices which say: "Don't be responsible to tatorship, using psychological propaganda, yourself. It is no longer any use. Be re­ everyone shares with everyone else such sponsible to us." In England he is invited enormous secrets of fear and anxiety that to become an agent for disseminating cul­ the idea of being outside what is happening ture through the British Broadcasting Cor­ -as Keats in his way, and Dickens in his poration, or the British Council. In the quite different way, were outside it-seems United States he is invited to join a uni­ impossible. Indeed a writer, like T. S. Eliot, versity to become a teacher of creative writ­ who does retain a certain outsideness, only ing, with a certain real though vaguely manages to do so by describing a religious defined responsibility to the academic experience which is outside time and history world. Meanwhile a tremendous critical altogether. apparatus based on a study of the past We cannot imagine that the young works of writers, most of whom hated the writer of genius will today believe himself very idea of critics and criticism, grows up to be a unique person in a unique position and rules about technique, influences, bringing to other people a picture of living myths, and so on are extracted from past values which will change the lives of those works, which get very near to supplying who have eyes to see and ears to hear. In­ the young with objective formulae for stead now of an art which will add another creating new ones. There is a great deal of world of the imagination to the material talk about Freud and lung and the uncon­ world, we have literature of young novel­ scious, but the fact that writing should be ists which, however eccentric or fantastic a process of whose development the writer it may seem, is really documentary. Some- himself should be largely unconscious is 3 10 THE QUA.RTERLY REVIEW forgotten. At this point it may be well to everything and then make the best of the remind ourselves that Goethe observed to circumstances of a Iife of private sensations Eckermann that it would be impossible in and experience which is still possible to the future for any poet to attain the stature you." His own book, 1984, like Camus' of Shakespeare. The reason he gave for novel, The Plague, refutes him. It is still this conclusion was that the result of con­ possible, by trying to see the largest truth temporary criticism would make it impos­ about the time in which we live, and by sible for any poet to develop, as Shake­ simply stating it, to get outside the whale. speare did, without being self-conscious Meanwhile, one can also say that there about his own development. The true de­ are certain things which are wrong, and velopment of a poet like Shakespeare­ even a few which are right. It may be neces­ Goethe thought-was like that of a man sary to accept the situation of working in a who walks in his sleep. more official capacity-as a teacher, or a cultural agent-than before, but it is still HE temptation of the writer of yester­ not necessary to sell your soul. By selling T day-W. H. Auden has said-was to your soul I mean not cherishing the distinc­ be too individualistic, too proud, too iso­ tion between work which one does to satisfy lated. But the temptation of the writer to­ one's own standards and that done to satisfy day-he went on-is to prostitute himself, other people's standards. One's own stand­ to make slight concessions all the way ards are simply to write about the truth round: to the academies, to the cultural as one experiences it, in the way in which agencies, to the glossy magazines which one can write about it. To discover these have decided that they want to publish two things is already the task of a lifetime, something "better" than they have done and by simply devoting oneself to them before, but not too good. one may solve the problems which I have In the present situation it is extremely stated here. difficult to say what is the right course for Another positive thing which I can say the young writer. You can't, as you would is that the young should be an audience for perhaps do in the past, advise "Find the one another. In this the creative writing right patron who will give you the freedom courses, of which I feel critical in some to do your best work which will glorify his ways, offer a tremendous opportunity to name," nor yet "Create in your work the young writers. It may not be that all of you vision of an inner life of aesthetic values are going to be writers, but there is every which will enable your readers to escape reason why all of you should be interested the vulgarity and banality of modern liv­ in the writing of each one of you. The in­ ing"; nor "Take sides with the cause which terest that you can give to the writer who represents greater human freedom and draw is going to be outstanding among you is the strength from the life and future of the equivalent, at this stage of his development, just cause you support." It is not as easy to a blood transfusion. And it is blood which as that. Nor do I accept the despairing view only the young can give to others who are of George Orwell in his very interesting young, because later on in life everyone is essay on Henry Miller, entitled Inside the too preoccupied with his own affairs to give W hale. Orwell says in words which I para­ so generously. No one ever receives in all phrase: "Accept the fact that you can do his life any praise which is comparable to absolutely nothing to alter the condition of that which one receives when one has sent the world today. Make a virtue of necessity, one's first work to a friend who feels it to and like Jonah, use your art to get inside the be a new and exciting experience in his own whale. Don't object, don't rebel, just accept life. THE YOUNG WRITER 311

The most important thing of all, though, degree that the present writers fulfill their s to have an absolutely sacred sense of the vocation they are extending into the future vocation of being a writer. A writer is a the life of the old. There remains the prob­ )erson who experiences with part of him­ lem of relating oneself to the present situa­ ;elf the life around him and with some tion. But the true writer lives in a past and )ther part of himself the life of those past a future situation for which the present is Nriters whose works have filled him with only a bridge. This reduces the contem­ the desire to be a writer. In his own work he porary problem to its true proportions. It relates his sense of that past with his aware­ means that although you must be aware of 1ess of this present. In doing so he creates the present situation you must see it in i

I ;omething entirely new, and this new thing, the light of the past and future, pursue your i if it is worthy, is to write the words which vocation, write as well as you can and not :he past master would write about contem­ better than you can, provide an audience porary life if he were now living. Through for your contemporaries, and judge life i, the contemporary writer's hand flows the from the center of your artistic conscience, I I Jlood of past writers, and to the to which you are alone responsible. I I I I

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