Anonymous
7/23/2025, 6:01:16 AM No.24574833
Chesterton is a vile scum on the pond. The multitude of his mumblings cannot be killed by multitude but only by a sharp thrust (even that won’t do it, but it purges one’s soul).
All his slop—it is really modern catholicism to a great extent, the never taking a hedge straight, the mumbo-jumbo of superstition dodging behind clumsy fun and paradox.
If it were a question of cruelty to a weak man I shouldn’t, of course, have printed it. But Chesterton is so much the mob, so much the multitude. It is not as if he weren’t a symbol for all the mob’s hatred of all art that aspires above mediocrity.
I feel very differently about Belloc, who once wanted to do the real thing, and for a long time, at least, had moments of bitterness (I think) that he had taken the journalistic turning. Still, he has left ‘Avril’ and his translation of Bedier's Tristan.
Chesterton has always taken the stand that the real thing isn’t worth doing. (Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration???? Complex of my own vanity??) My feeling is, perhaps, heightened by a feeling that I should probably like G.K.C. personally if I ever met him. Still, I believe he creates a milieu in which art is impossible. He and his kind.
All his slop—it is really modern catholicism to a great extent, the never taking a hedge straight, the mumbo-jumbo of superstition dodging behind clumsy fun and paradox.
If it were a question of cruelty to a weak man I shouldn’t, of course, have printed it. But Chesterton is so much the mob, so much the multitude. It is not as if he weren’t a symbol for all the mob’s hatred of all art that aspires above mediocrity.
I feel very differently about Belloc, who once wanted to do the real thing, and for a long time, at least, had moments of bitterness (I think) that he had taken the journalistic turning. Still, he has left ‘Avril’ and his translation of Bedier's Tristan.
Chesterton has always taken the stand that the real thing isn’t worth doing. (Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration???? Complex of my own vanity??) My feeling is, perhaps, heightened by a feeling that I should probably like G.K.C. personally if I ever met him. Still, I believe he creates a milieu in which art is impossible. He and his kind.
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