Literary Opinion

"There was a tremendous thing said by the poet A. E. Housman, in the preface to an edition of a Latin author: he said that the German professor A when he read the German professor B, must have felt like Sin when she brought forth Death. Now I am willing to confess I have sometimes felt like this when reading modern literary criticism, but not at all often. People aren't such fools as all that; the thing settles itself."

(big Bill Empson, 'Literary Opinion', a radio broadcast, 20 October 1954)