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Quote by Terry Eagleton

“Truth is ugliness, not beauty. If the artist is to redeem the whole of reality, whether as naturalistic novelist or demonic post Baudelairean poet, he must undergo what Yeats calls the baptism of the gutter, refusing orthodox moral distinctions so as to become imaginatively at one with the slime and refuse of human existence. Only in this way will he be able to gather the excremental into the eternal. It is an aesthetic version of crucifixion and resurrection, one which invests the poet with a certain aura of sanctity. Yet he is also sacred in the ancient sense of being both blessed and cursed. To live by imaginative empathy is to be bereft of a self; to be without a self is to exist as a kind of nothingness; and nothingness is unnervingly close to evil.”

Quote by Terry Eagleton

Work

Culture and the Death of God

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Author

Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton is a renowned British literary critic, known for his research on Marxist literary theory. His work spans a wide range of literary and theoretical topics, influencing cultural studies and political commentary as well. more

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