February 26, 2007: Blackie on Expectations when Reading - 0 Comments

"We must be acclimatized in the new country before we can feel comfortable. We must not merely deliver our criticism thus (however common such a style may be)-- I expected to find that; I find this; and I am disappointed; but we must ask the deeper and only valuable question-- What ought I to have expected to find, what shall I surely find of good, and beautiful, and true, if my eyes are open, and my free glance pointed in the right direction?"

- John Stuart Blackie, intro to his translations of The Lyrical Dramas of Aeschylus, 1850.