Last evening's entry referred to a 1961 essay by Iris Murdoch titled "Against Dryness." Murdoch's use of "dryness" as a literary term is taken from a 1911 essay by T. E. Hulme, "Romanticism and Classicism." Hulme says that
"There is a general tendency to think that verse means little else than the expression of unsatisfied emotion. People say: 'But how can you have verse without sentiment?' You see what it is: the prospect alarms them. A classical revival to them would mean the prospect of an arid desert and the death of poetry as they understand it, and could only come to fill the gap caused by that death. Exactly why this dry classical spirit should have a positive and legitimate necessity to express itself in poetry is utterly inconceivable to them."
Related philosophy from Hollywood:
- Bentley: … What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert?
- Lawrence: It's clean.
- Bentley: Well, now, that's a very illuminating answer.