Quotes from book
The Liberal Imagination

Name: The Liberal Imagination
Author: Lionel Trilling

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society is a collection of sixteen essays by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published by Viking in 1950. The book was edited by Pascal Covici, who had worked with Trilling when he edited and introduced Viking's Portable Matthew Arnold in 1949. With the exception of the preface, which was written specifically for the publication of the book, all the essays included in The Liberal Imagination were individually published in the decade before the book's publication in literary and critical journals, such as The Partisan Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, and The American Quarterly. The essays, then, represent Trilling's written work and critical thoughts of the 1940s.

“Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

F. Scott Fitzgerald http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/trilling-fsf.html <br class="br">The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

Art and Neurosis
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

Manners, Morals and the Novel
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

The Function of the Little Magazine
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

Freud and Literature
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

The Function of the Little Magazine
The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Context: The writer must define his audience by its abilities, by its perfections, so far as he is gifted to conceive them. He does well, if he cannot see his right audience within immediate reach of his voice, to direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie. The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.