I believe it can be shown that all Mr. Richards' troubles, all the weaknesses of his books, derive from [the] fundamental error of trying to cut off the organization and control of practical activity from science and bring it over into poetry. And first among these troubles I should mention the heavy labor it turns out to be, even for those vividly interested in the subject, to read his Principles of Literary Criticism. Rarely has a man rich in new and important thoughts produced a book so tiring to the mind. We emerge on the last page with a feeling that we have been wading and plunging through a vastly important jungle of ideas, every one so overlaid and entangled with exceptions, interpolations, affiliations, methodological asides, obiter dictums and addendums, that no clear impression remains even of those ideas which were—we vaguely remember—brilliantly well stated and defined. We emerge—only to learn in the conclusion, that Mr. Richards spent half of his own labor on the book "in simplifying its structure, in taking out reservations and qualifications"! Well, is not that what always happens when you try to insert a body of facts into a theory which does not fit them—or any other body into any other mismade receptacle? (p. 303)
Not only does Mr. Richards have to tend and tinker his explanation of poetry, plugging and caulking it continually with reservations and qualifications, but he has to admit that, when all's plugged that can be plugged, the thing will not work anyway. It leaves out the main thing that was to be explained. The poet uses certain words, he tells us, "as a means of ordering, controlling and consolidating" an experience. And "to a suitable reader … the words will reproduce in his mind a similar play of interests putting him for a while into a similar situation and leading to the same response." But "why this should happen is still somewhat of a mystery…."
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