[Q] Do you have strong feelings about the function of art and poetry, or do you feel that when we look to art for consolation, sublimation or transcendence we should remain sceptical about its value?
[A] What is wrong with accepting both parts of that proposition? To succeed totally in finding consolation in art would be to enter a prelapsarian kingdom. Father Chirstopher Devlin has a very fine phrase to define the themes of Hopkins's sermons -- "the lost kingdom of innocence and original justice", which is a lovely resonant phrase; and without in any way aligning myself hubristically with Hopkins, I would want to avail myself of Devlin's phrase, because I think there's a real sense in which every fine and moving poem bears witness to this lost kingdom of innocence and original justice. In handling the English language the poet makes an act of recognition that etymology is history. The history of the creation and the debasement of words is a paradigm of the loss of the kingdom of innocence and orignal justice.
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