The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Don Juan

Byron's poem positively gallops and is really quite funny, and often not at all politically correct.

Everyone has heard of the hen-pecking blue-stockings.

But there are also quips like "Revenge in person's certainly no virtue,/But then 'tis not my fault, if others hurt you."

OK, to be fair, it wasn't just Whitman's work that killed poetry.

It was the irresistible progress of philistinism, especially as it has affected higher education.

Byron's classical allusions would escape, annoy, and irreparably alienate 90% of his potential "educated" audience, today, when ignorance of anything and everything not obviously useful in making money is actually cherished, even by the more than usually intelligent, as a sterling proof of good sense.

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