theoryofliteratu00inwell

74
Theory of Literature
ever, it seems dangerous to ascribe to it any real critical impor-
tance. No biographical evidence can change or influence critical
evaluation. The frequently adduced criterion of "sincerity" is
thoroughly false if it judges literature in terms of biographical
truthfulness, correspondence to the author's experience or feelings
as they are attested by outside evidence. Byron's "Fare
Thee Well . . ." is neither a worse nor a better poem because
it dramatizes the poet's actual relations with his wife, nor "is it a
pity," as Paul Elmer More thinks, that the MS shows no traces
of the tears which, according to Thomas Moore's Memoranda,
fell on it. 11 The poem exists ; the tears shed or unshed, the personal
emotions, are gone and cannot be reconstructed, nor need
they be.