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Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.

Cyril Connolly

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Cyril Connolly
Age: 71 †
Born: 1903
Born: September 10
Died: 1974
Died: November 26
Critic
Literary Critic
Novelist
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Cyril Vernon Connolly
Dried
Poets
Arguing
Poet
Poetry
Modern
Wells
Snarling
Well
Jackals

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Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.
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The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
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Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities it is all they have to insure their places in the world.
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Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
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Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
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When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
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Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
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The American language is in a state of flux based upon survival of the unfittest.
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Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.
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The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
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We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
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Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
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Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.
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Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.
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For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
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How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
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Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.
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In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
Cyril Connolly