NR Editor-at-Large Linda Bridges, who has one of the best-furnished minds in Conservative-dom—up there with Rick Brookhiser and Roger Kimball—passed this on to me when I told her I was going to Norma.
In W.H. Auden’s poem “Vespers,” where the poet contrasts his “Arcadian” outlook with that of a “Utopian,” there occurs this:
In my Eden a person who dislikes Bellini has the good manners not to get born: In his New Jerusalem a person who dislikes work will be very sorry he was born.
I’ve been dotty about Bellini for 20 years, but I’d never encountered that.