ABSTRACT
When we survey what has been written on the various arts, it is remarkable how much more is devoted to the literary arts than to any of the others. Remarkable, perhaps, but not surprising, for one would think that literature is in a favoured position, since the medium of the commentator is identical with the medium of the artist. Literature appears to be the sole artistic beneficiary of Stravinsky’s insight that the best comment on one piece of music is another piece of music. While music rarely comments, language, it would seem, nearly always does, thus solving the principal difficulty of aesthetics – the radical dissimilarity between the subject of the discussion and the discussion of the subject.
