Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [29]

Goethe made a rather bitter epigram on Good Society: it is “good,” he said, if it offers no opportunity whatever to poetry. Mrs. Wharton applies this epigram without bitterness; she would certainly prefer poetry to society, and a performance of Bérénice to a polo match, but she is not emphatic, and more inclined to chaff her worldlings than to ex-communicate them. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 29

Note

The Goethe epigram—society is ‘good’ when it offers no opportunity to poetry—provides a precise lens for the novel’s project: Wharton documents precisely that society while preferring poetry, yet ‘more inclined to chaff her worldlings than to ex-communicate them.’