"Then, there is the problem of the role of experience. If you read a poem to yourself, or recite a poem, you know that what matters is the sound of that poem, the structure of it, the way the verse unfolds, the form of it, but not what it literally says—or, at least, not what it literally says when extracted from that form. It is not like a textbook. If you are curious about nuclear physics, you might pick up a textbook of nuclear physics, read it, and having absorbed it and being diligent students, memorized the whole lot. You put it on the shelf and that’s it, that’s the last time you look at it, because you’ve extracted the information from it. But that’s not the way that people appreciate poems, is it? It’s not that they extract the information and then never visit it again. On the contrary, a good poem is one that gains from repetition, even when you know it by heart, and even when it says something that seems extremely light. Even if it touches with a light touch on the realities of this world, like say Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods.” It doesn’t say very much, but the form, the rhythm, and the way in which it seems to touch something deep in you, means that you will want to repeat it, want to go on reading it again and again. One thought, then, is that we don’t actually go to art for information. The information content is not the primary thing, it’s the experience."
Roger Scruton
