That does render a note of bitterness, perfectly natural also, which gives way to something more enduring. The poetry itself, with its technical demands, is a kind of consolation, and one which outlasts the cold record of fact. An early influence on Iris Murdoch was the critic D. S. Savage, like the young Iris Murdoch, a protege of the communitarian idealist John Middleton Murry. It is a view we may respect without giving uncritical assent. Iris Murdoch in her development moved from a view of art as 'an existential relation to the truth' to a recognition of the magical effect of language.
Literature can conjure effects outside of society.
Our relation to the world is not, as Savage would have it, only the intrinsic, direct communication he demands of language. Clarity and directness, factual and balanced, is a prime virtue of journalism. Literature, like ordinary conversation, is more subtle or more personally direct. It is resourceful in its use of allusion and irony, as well as a levelled certainty which is the home truth. Language must range across a spectrum of approaches and their impulses.