Music at Night
Encyclopedia
Music at Night is a 1931 collection of essays by Aldous Huxley
.
The essays in this books cover different subjects, such as morality in arts ('To the Puritan All Thing are Impure', a defence of his friend D. H. Lawrence
), music ("After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music", he writes in 'The Rest is Silence'), similarities in the behaviour of men and cats ('Sermons in Cats').
Part of these essays may be regarded as a description of changes in society at the first half of the 20th century: 'Forehead Villanious Low' deals with the fruits of universal education, while 'Art and the Great Truth' defines modernist literature
as "A terror for the obvious in his [the writer's] artistic medium - (...) which leads him to make laborious efforts to destroy the gradually perfected instrument of language".
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
.
The essays in this books cover different subjects, such as morality in arts ('To the Puritan All Thing are Impure', a defence of his friend D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
), music ("After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music", he writes in 'The Rest is Silence'), similarities in the behaviour of men and cats ('Sermons in Cats').
Part of these essays may be regarded as a description of changes in society at the first half of the 20th century: 'Forehead Villanious Low' deals with the fruits of universal education, while 'Art and the Great Truth' defines modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
as "A terror for the obvious in his [the writer's] artistic medium - (...) which leads him to make laborious efforts to destroy the gradually perfected instrument of language".