
The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
Vol. 3, p. 611
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day
The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.”
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 194
Context: Culture is knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world; in other words, culture means reading, not idle and casual reading, but reading that is controlled and directed by a definite purpose. Reading, so understood, is difficult, and contrary to an almost universal belief, those who can do it are very few. I have already remarked the fact that there is no more groundless assumption than that literacy carries with it the ability to read. At the age of seventy-nine Goethe said that those who make this assumption "do not know what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been working at it for eighteen years, and I can't say yet that I am completely successful."
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 17