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1.	I do not know which German poet of the last century declared that he was modern from his head to the bottom of his heels. He must have meant that the questions he asked could not be answered by the past, but only by the present.
2.	It is impossible for a poet to be traditional, in the sense that he models himself on precedent. He asks the present his questions and receives his answers in the vocabulary of the past.
3.	Many people have observed the profound difference between criticizing the classics and the work of our contemporaries. From the classics we obtain our vocabulary and from our contemporaries a spiritual war communique.
4.	In a literary review we find the chronicle of a series of battles. To those who do not themselves fight battles, they are like explorations in the fourth dimension.
5.	We sometimes consider a writer of the past our battle companion. For that purpose, however, we give them an entirely new shape, like we do with our women.

—S.E.