Poetry and Civilization

 From Empson (1930) 

"....there is a sort of meaning, the sort that people are thinking of when they say 'this poet will mean more to you when have more experience of life,'...They mean by this not so much that you will have more information (which could be given at once) as that the information will have been digested; that you will be more experienced in the apprehension of verbal subtleties or of the poet's social tone; that you will have become the sort of person that can feel at home in, or imagine, or extract experience from, what is described by the poetry; that you will have included it among the things you are prepared to apprehend." (p. 3)

From Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919)

"When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness that joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child. Every event, every deed wad defined in given and expressive forms and was in accord with the solemnity of a tight, invariable life cycle. The great events of human life---birth, marriage, death---by virtue of the sacraments, basked in the radiance of divine mystery. But even the lesser events---a journey, a labor, a visit---were accompanied by a multitude of blessings, ceremonies, sayings, and conventions." (Opening of Chapter 1, "The Passionate Intensity of Life")