“All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.” LittlesWholePoetryLyrical Book:Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated) Source: Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)
“I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem.” PeopleIfsMeanLongBookWholeFeelingsPoetryCommunityEffortWrittenProductsWhole Life Author:Anne Sexton
“Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.” WayArtWholePoetryHidingAnother WayRiddle Author:Theodor Adorno
“Literature is a form of language that breaks with the whole definition of genres as forms adapted to an order of representations, and becomes merely a manifestation of a language which has no other law than that of affirming in opposition to all other forms of discourse its own precipitous existence.” ArtWholeFormLawPoetryOrderLiteratureLanguageExistenceBreakDefinitionsGenreManifestationOppositionRepresentationDiscourseAdaptedAffirming Book:The Order of Things Source: The Order of Things
“The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.” WritingIdeasWholeSeemsPoetryLiteratureUnderstandingSoundNovelStudentsFitSonnetDaft Author:Nicholas Royle
“A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck and it will strike us as indecent ... The text is one of the components of an artistic work, albeit an extremely important component ... But the artistic effect as a whole arises from comparisons of the text with a complex set of ontological and ideological esthetic ideas.” DoeImportantIdeasWholeSeemsPoetryLiteratureEffectsComplexesStrikesAriseNakedArtisticTiesNecksComparisonMuseumsComponentsStatuesApolloIdeological Author:Yuri Lotman
“Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.” IfsWholeFormPoetryLiteratureAcceptingEconomyPositionSpeedOutcomesInternalsInterpretationCrucialPassagesSubordinatesBanality Author:Umberto Eco
“You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.” IfsStillsWholeMightPoetryPurposeUniverseImaginationNaturalDealsMoralFoolBearsEvolutionConscienceIntelligenceAccidentsProofSignificanceMetaphysicsSelectionDecencyUnnaturalThoroughNatural SelectionRascalsAppropriateness Author:George Bernard Shaw
“The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.” MenGivingWholePoetryWaterAnimalSecretObjectsPlantAppealsIntimateFacultyInterpretationWordsworthLinnaeus Book:Essays in Criticism Source: Essays in Criticism
“He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.” MindFirstsChildrenLittlesWholePoetryPiecesTalentPoetChiefsTitlesEnlightenedAspireSuperiorityHindranceGreat PoetUnlearn Author:Thomas B. Macaulay
“The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.” ShouldArtPhilosophyWholePoetryUnitedModernPoetPhilosophicalPoetry IsCommentaryModern Poetry Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
“Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.” ThinkingShouldArtEndsPhilosophyWholeFeelingsPoetryNaturalViewsCommonExamplePoetLimitsConsciousRelationPhilosophicalUnityMerePoint Of ViewBoundariesPerceiveRealmsLinksContrastOrganismsLiberal Education Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
“Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.” IfsEndsWholePoetryLostJokesPoetry IsOne Word Author:W. S. Merwin
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” IfsKnowsWayFeelsBookWholeBodyPoetryTakenFireColdWarm Author:Emily Dickinson
“She had blue skin, And so did he. He kept it hid And so did she. They searched for blue Their whole life through, Then passed right by- And never knew.” WholePoetrySkinsBlueWhole LifePassingsMaskHidingLooking For LoveNo Second Chances Author:Shel Silverstein
“"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star."That poetic paranoia is a perfect description of what the Sun, as a gravitational lens, could do for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” KnowsWellsWholeMomentsPoetryUniverseStarsPerfectSunListeningDescriptionPoeticEchoesLensesParanoiaExtraterrestrial Author:Frank Drake
“Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.” MenWholePoetryCommunityPressesDelightAmusementPrintingPrinting Press Author:John Masefield
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.” IfsKnowsBookWholeBodyPoetryFireColdWarmEmilyReading Poetry Author:Emily Dickinson