Let’s return to that sentence in ‘The Literary Mind’:This is a striking, challenging, complex statement. It is also key to appreciating Leavis’s sense of language’s place and function. Firstly, the kind of experience Leavis is invoking is not simple event. Denis Donoghue has a helpful steer here. He argues there is a movement from ‘circumstance’ to ‘experience’:Donoghue isn’t distinguishing between circumstance and experience as if they have an out-in-the-world difference; he’s saying the difference between them depends on us. Circumstance can become experience, but in order for that to take place, it must alter ‘the structure of our feeling’. ‘Experience’ requires recognition, reflection, and interpretation, requires integration, while ‘circumstance’ refers to something remaining a happening, which doesn’t have an impact we’re aware of. Once recognition and interpretation are involved, so too is the ‘structure’ of ourselves. There’s an aspect of agency in Donoghue’s words, for one chooses, however unconsciously or unintentionally, the kind of experience a circumstance is able to become: one determines the shape, and often also the narrative, of its impact. Any ‘alter[ation]’ is never uniform: it will always be in some manner creative. Articulation (written, spoken, signed) of our accustomed or habitual modes of relating to experience can enable us to see them: it makes them available for consideration and so also potentially for reshaping or reconstrual. This also means it is possible, though it might take much work (therapeutic or otherwise) to change the shape or narrative, and so alter the impact. The potential role of language here is powerful. Words can form a practice; they can form part of what enables one to grapple with and gain a deeper understanding of response.