The Secret Library – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

The Meaning of ‘Poetry Is Not a Turning Loose of Emotion, but an Escape from Emotion’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the meaning of one of T. S. Eliot’s most famous statements about poetry

‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.’ This statement from T. S. Eliot is one of his most famous critical pronouncements, but what Eliot meant by ‘escape from personality’ in particular has often been misinterpreted. Let’s take a closer look at the essay in which Eliot’s statement appears.

The Meaning and Origin of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls; It Tolls for Thee’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the origins of a famous phrase about human sympathy and mortality

‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ This phrase has become world-famous but its origins, and even its meaning, are often misconstrued or at least only partially grasped. Many people would be able to identify the origins of ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls’ in the work of John Donne (which would be correct), with quite a few of them thinking that the line originated in a poem of Donne’s (which would not be correct).

The Meaning and Origin of ‘It Was a Bright Cold Day in April, and the Clocks Were Striking Thirteen’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the famous opening sentence of Orwell’s final novel

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ Since those words were first published in 1949, they have joined the pantheon, the literary canon, of great opening lines. They are, without doubt, up there with Austen’s ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’, Dickens’s ‘It was the best of times’, and Melville’s ‘Call me Ishmael’ (which aren’t technically the opening lines of Moby-Dick; but that’s a story for another Friday).

The Author Who Foresaw Lockdown: J. G. Ballard’s Myths of the Near Future

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the prophetic visions of a highly original writer

Say ‘Myths of the Near Future’ to many people and they will think of the album by the Klaxons, but the Klaxons named their 2007 debut after a 1982 collection of short stories by J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), a writer who has joined the ranks of such visionaries as Kafka and Orwell by having an adjective named after him: ‘Ballardian’ is defined by Collins Dictionary as ‘resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.’

Who Wrote the Advertising Slogan ‘Go to Work on an Egg’?

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders the links between famous writers and advertising slogans

Fay Weldon, author of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), is one of several famous novelists who started out in the field of advertising. In this connection she is probably most famous for writing the slogan ‘Go to work on an egg’, in support of a large advertising campaign in Britain in the 1950s endorsed by the Egg Marketing Board.