Publisher's Synopsis
Ever since Plato, literary criticism has been so stymied by the need to justify literature's right to exist that it has paid virtually no attention to what literature needs: tolerance, freedom, and diversity so as to give creative evolution a wider spectrum from which to select. That explains why sociobiologist Henri Bergson's views have found their way into anthologies of literary criticism by default. It turns out, however, that around World War I, the Polish poet and critic Boleslaw Lesmian successfully addressed this very problem specifically with regard to literature, not as an analogy of something else; his most seminal essays have been translated herein in the hope that they will replace Bergson in future anthologies.
