Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Frank Bidart

Quote by Frank Bidart

Work

Watching the Spring Festival: Poems

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart

Frank Bidart is an American academic, born on May 27, 1939. He is renowned for his expertise in literature and poetry, known for his unique poetic style and profound thematic explorations. more

You May Also Like

“...I thought, with a certain amount of sorrow, how much enormous talent there must be in the world for nature simply to toss it away so arbitrarily! But nature could not care less what we think about it, and as far as talent is concerned, there is such an excess that our artists will soon become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.”

ArtTalent
Book:The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse
Create image

“Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all because we are progressing. You brag of your Opera houses; ten Opera houses the size of yours could dance a saraband in a Roman amphitheatre. Even Mr. Martin, with his lame tiger and his poor gouty lion, as drowsy as a subscriber to the Gazette, cuts a pretty small figure by the side of a gladiator from antiquity. What are your benefit performances, lasting till two in the morning, compared with those games which lasted a hundred days, with those performances in which real ships fought real battles on a real sea; when thousands of men earnestly carved each other -- turn pale, O heroic Franconi! -- when, the sea having withdrawn, the desert appeared, with its raging tigers and lions, fearful supernumeraries that played but once; when the leading part was played by some robust Dacian or Pannonian athlete, whom it would often have been might difficult to recall at the close of the performance, whose leading lady was some splendid and hungry lioness of Numidia starved for three days? Do you not consider the clown elephant superior to Mlle. Georges? Do you believe Taglioni dances better than did Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? Admirable as is Bocage, I am convinced Roscius could have given him points. Galeria Coppiola played young girls' parts, when over one hundred years old; it is true that the oldest of our leading ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mlle. Mars has not even progressed in that direction. The ancients had three or four thousand gods in whom they believed, and we have but one, in whom we scarcely believe. That is a strange sort of progress. Is not Jupiter worth a good deal more than Don Juan, and is he not a much greater seducer? By my faith, I know not what we have invented, or even wherein we have improved.”

ArtSociety
Book:Mademoiselle de Maupin
Create image

“Le créateur, ou l´artiste, ne se contente pas de produire un objet utile, mais il investit cet objet de sa subjectivité, de son ressenti personnel: il va incarner dans son oeuvre son 'idea', c´est-à-dire le projet, la vision qu´il porte en lui et dans laquelle d´autres vont se retrouver, car la création artistique, acte gratuit, sans "utilité" réelle, est une activité symbolique qui s´adresse au plus profond de l´être. D´ailleurs, pour la qualifier, nous utilisons le language du coeur et de l´âme: face à une oeuvre d´art nous nous déclarons "émus", "touchés", "bouleversés". Ce n´est pas l´usage que nous pouvons en faire qui nous interpelle mais sa dimension esthétique et symbolique gratuite.”

ArtCréation Artistique
Book:Petit traité de vie intérieure
Create image

“Revolutionary art need not be overtly political in content; what is more important is that it demand a new means of perception on the part of its spectators. The subject in process/on trial can thus be fundamentally transformed. Change here, at the level of individual consciousness, is a necessary element of social change. Seen in this way, the arts are not merely reflective of social relations but are productive of social relations.”

ArtPolitics
Book:Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture
Create image