[{"node":{"title":"GreacenStanford218","Collections":"Letters to Stanford","Contributor":"Greacen Estate","Coverage":"1975 Mar 7th","Creator":"LHL","Date":"Wednesday, March 16, 2016","Format":"TIFF","Identifier":"GreacenStanford218","Item Description":"Letter","Keywords":"MacNeice","Language":"English","Path":"https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/content/greacenstanford218","Publisher":"LHL","Relation":"LHL","Rights":"Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA","Scanned image":{"src":"https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/sites/default/files/GreacenStanford218.jpg","alt":""},"Source":"LHL Archive","Transcript":"\ufeff7/3/75 My dear Derek, The inc.\nmay interest you, not least for the\nnote on R.G. Please return\nLove to you both Robert\n\nMr. Brown, in this useful\ncritical study, rightly insists\nthat \u201c'in political as well as in\nmetaphysical and religious\nmatters, his scepticism was\nfundamental.\u201d This unwilling-\nness to commit himself to an\nideology, religion or indeed\ncountry, is the theme with\nwhich Mr. Brown concerns\nhimself.\n\nInsofar as he made a stand,\nit was for the humanities.\n\u201cAn impresario of the ancient\nGreeks\" \u2014 as MacNeice de-\nscribed himself \u2014 the poet\nargued the case for a certain\nminimum of human decency\nwhich, disillusioned and some-\ntimes cynical as he was, he be-\nlieved could yet be salvaged\nfrom the coming disintegra-\ntion of Western Europe. In\none of his best lyrics, \u201cThe\nSunlight on the Garden\", he\nspoke of the disastrous imme-\ndiate future:\n\n\u201cAutumn Journal\u201d. This poem\nalso illustrates his mastery of\nthe poetic Higher Journaiom:\nyet the operative word is\n\u201cpoetic\", for in spite of its\nslanginess and inverted cliches\n\u2014remember his \u201cHomage to\nCliches\"?\u2014the journal must be\nread essentially as the work of\na highly civilised man under-\ngoing great personal stress It\nreveals, too, his accent on form\nwhich came presumably from\nthe influence of neo-Drydenism\nand Graeco-Roman classicism,\nthough sometimes behind the\nelegant facade one glimpses the\nromantic, spontaneous on the\nhighest level and slapdash on\nthe lowest. This stylistic un-\nevenness led a war-time critic,\nFrancis Scarfe, to conclude\nthat MacNeice was \"not single-\nminded, and for that reason\nwill provide a successor neither\nto Eliot nor Dryden.\u201d\n\nMr. Brown discusses at some\n","Type":"Text"}}]