Rome: Leskov, T.S. Eliot, and Uncle Ezra

Eliot and Ezra are of course connected in Eternity. But Leskov -- how is he connected to the other two? Answer: all three kept me company in Italy. Leskov (whether he knows it or not) was my exclusive companion in Rome. In Venice I broke with Leskov (temporarily) to read (reread?) Eliot's "Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry."

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A few quotes from Eliot's salute to Pound:

"Ezra Pound has been fathered with vers libre in English, with all its vices and virtues. The term is a loose one -- any verse is called "free" by people whose ears are not accustomed to it -- in the second place, Pound's use of this medium has shown the temperance of the artist, and his belief in it as a vehicle is not that of the fanatic. He has said himself that when one has the proper material for a sonnet, one should use the sonnet form; but that it happens very rarely to any poet to find himself in possession of just the block of stuff which can perfectly be modelled into the sonnet."

"Any work of art is a compound of freedom and order."

"Art is departure from fixed positions; felicitous departure from a norm...."

"Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhaps it is the most valuable thing in life; but the power to express emotion so that it shall communicate itself intact and exactly is almost more valuable."

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Another example of a "humorous hook" of an intro from Leskov's "The Pearl Necklace" (I'm thinking Flaubert would agree with Pisemesky):

In a certain cultivated family, some friends were sitting over tea and talking about literature -- about invention, plot. They regretted that with us all this was getting poorer and paler. I remembered and recounted a characteristic observation of the late Pisemesky, who said that the perceived impoverishment of literature was connected first of all with the multiplication of railroads, which are very useful for commerce, but harmful for artistic literature.