“Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of.” Quote by Christian Wiman
“I can't think offhand of any American poets who have Mandelstam's urgency, but it's a different country and a different time, and I don't think it would make much sense to say that this is something that's "missing" from contemporary American poetry.” ThinkingI CanDifferentCountryMissingPoetContemporaryUrgencyDifferent TimesDifferent CountriesAmerican Poetry Author:Christian Wiman
“Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.” TwoSeemsPoetLinkedUrgentAnnaAmerican Poetry Author:Christian Wiman
“It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities.” DifferentEmotionDemandPerceptionIntensityFrequencyDifferent Emotions Author:Christian Wiman
“Science is a truth that is true no matter what, no matter when and for all time and science as the kind of gospel truth replaces the gospel, which was religion.” KindMatterNo Matter WhatAll Time Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostling between science and religion over the truth and this is why Darwin was so controversial.” RealCenturyInstanceScience And ReligionControversialNineteenth Century Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“Emerson was not passionate about abolition. He wasn't a passionate person. He was a cool intellectual, and I think he probably was a little uncomfortable with passionate people, but he was against slavery.” PeopleThinkingLittlesPersonsIntellectualSlaveryPassionateUncomfortableAbolition Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“We live in a world in which it's harder to talk about the American in the singular, so we're a multi. We have several different people who represent the United States, so in that sense whiteness, the salience, the importance of whiteness is kind of tamping down some.” PeopleWorldKindDifferentStatesUnitedUnited StatesImportanceHarderDifferent PeoplesWhiteness Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“The American sense of the importance, the fundamental importance of the black-white dichotomy, comes out of societies founded in the era of the African slave trade, so societies like ours, that is to say the western hemisphere, the Caribbean and so forth, we share a lot in common.” BlackWhiteCommonShareImportanceFundamentalsTradeSlaveWesternErasCaribbeanHemisphereDichotomyBlack WhiteSlave Trade Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“In places like Germany or France the idea of black-white is not so much black-white but "our people and them," and "them" can be people from the near east like Turks or Muslims or North Africans, all of whom might well be considered white in the United States.” PeopleWellsIdeasStatesMightBlackWhiteUnitedUnited StatesEastFranceGermanyBlack White Author:Nell Irvin Painter
“I'm a professional historian. I do my research. I have a PhD. What does my race have to do with it?” DoeRaceResearchHistorianPhds Author:Nell Irvin Painter