Wednesday, July 21, 2021

" Shelley talks about “a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own”. Well, if you’re identifying with it, you’re not going out of your own nature. You’ve got out of your own nature and then – how charming – you find it’s you! All this pretence has made me love again, and more than ever, DH Lawrence’s poems about other creatures, other species. Such reminders of the limits of the sympathetic imagination." Christopher Ricks New Statesman