Sunday, September 09, 2018
Our Ancestors Did Not
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 21:
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The desire for simplicity is a late and sophisticated one. We moderns may like dances which are hardly distinguishable from walking and poetry which sounds as if it might be uttered ex tempore. Our ancestors did not. They liked a dance which was a dance, and fine clothes which no one could mistake for working clothes, and feasts that no one could mistake for ordinary dinners, and poetry that unblushingly proclaimed itself to be poetry.
