Quote of the Day (George Orwell, on How a Poem is Defended)

“There is no argument by which one can defend a poem. It defends itself by surviving, or it is indefensible.”— English novelist-essayist George Orwell (1904-1950), “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool,” in Polemic, No. 7, March 1947, reprinted in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: Volume 4, 1945-1950 (1968)