'Not the worship of ashes...'

 Recently I wrote about Richard Wilbur's precept: 'In poetry, all the revolutions are palace revolutions' – in other words, all true revolutions take place within the living tradition, the poetic heritage; nothing is overthrown, the tradition lives on (this applies only to true revolutions, not rebellion for its own sake, which leads nowhere). Yesterday I came across another quotation that I think expresses perfectly the value of tradition: 'Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.' This formulation was coined by a musicologist called Constantin Floros, and is taken from his study of Mahler's symphonies (which I haven't read, being no great fan of those works). 'The preservation of fire' is indeed what a living tradition is all about, and when it is based on the worship of ashes it is no longer alive – at which point the time is ripe for another palace revolution. Poetry could probably do with one now, though heaven knows where it would come from or what it would look like. At present the living tradition appears to be very much more alive in music than in poetry...