"literal" clarity vs. symbolic clarity

[abu nuwas]

       

Ray --- My thoughts went straight to Goya, the Caprichos. I spent hours going around the Prado looking at these - they have power to-day, because human nature has not much changed. I have spent more hours in the same place looking at what the call 'El Bosco' --Hieronymus Bosch, and his triptych, the 'Garden of Earthly Delights'. Absolutely nutty, and I still have a faded and poor reproduction above my bed.

Sam Goldwyn used to tell script-writers, that if they had a message, they should take it to Western Union...but what a Philistine he was! I personally can stand poetry which is sheer craft, which is mysterious, which has a message wrapped in elegance or force, or most things, if it is good. But I can see that Tennyson was on the wrong track when he banged on about the Light Brigade, likewise those heart-on-sleeve war poets, Auden and his illy clocks...Pah! I spit on them all!