ABSTRACT
The idea that a past work of literature can survive the passage of time essentially undamaged is consequent upon the general experience that we are often deeply responsive to such works. This deep response seems to owe nothing to critical interference of any kind . Our experience (like the Protestant experience of God with which it may be significantly contemporaneous) is direct, unmcdiated by the commentary or intercession of experts. We are sure that the old book we have in front of us has remained the same and it is immediately and fundamentally intelligible to us. Anyone who is used to reading criticism will realize that this sureness naively overlooks a number of qualifications, but it is a true reflection of the way in which readers usually read and it is the basis upon which most self-conscious kinds of reading are later built. This sense of the presentness of a past work of literature is one of literature's greatest strengths.
