It is probably a mistake for any kind of artist, even a critic, to endeavour to ‘keep up’ beyond a certain point. This does not mean that one has to accept the normal academic assumption that literature and art came to an end about forty years ago. Clearly the young and the middle-aged ought to try to appreciate one another. But one ought also to recognize that one’s aesthetic judgement is only fully valid between well-defined dates. Not to admit this is to throw away the advantage that one derives from being born into one’s own particular time…Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion, and one should recognize it as such, but one ought also to stick to one’s own world-view, even at the price of seeming old-fashioned: for that world-view springs out of experiences that the younger generation has not had, and to abandon it is to kill one’s intellectual roots.
Book review (Winter 1948)
Use the link below to read about the life and work of ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR, better known to the world as GEORGE ORWELL:
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