Art must bring closer, not distance; to fill up, not to dig chasms in our poor spirits, and so quite racked with questions...
Art must rest and heal man's inner contradictions. These contradictions derive from his very destiny and his tragedy.
The world can be saved through art. The artist basically makes toys... for big people; he is like the silkworm.
Art is not an escape from reality, but an entry into the truest reality - perhaps the only true reality.
Art has its object outside and beyond itself; and if this object is not precisely moral, it is social, which otherwise is almost the same thing... Art has a social function, and its true morality is the consciousness with which it fulfills this function.
The art that has nothing but itself as its object, the art that does not care about the quality of the characters it expresses, the art that does not take into account the impressions it is able to produce on the senses or awaken in the spirits, that art , however great the artist may be, I do not say that he is inferior, that would be another matter, but I say that he necessarily tends to immorality.
Expressing an entire era, the literary work can be representative of an important moment in the history of art or ideas.
A true writer must reflect in his work the fundamental problems of the people he belongs to.
The great poets wrote, not for an initiated minority, but for all men. This is not to take the statement on its face and say that any poem that all men understand is great, but only that every truly great poem can be understood by the vast majority of readers.
In a poetic creation the idea and the word form an inseparable unit. The creator's predilection for one word or another is not accidental, but on the contrary has a very precise meaning.
A great poet cannot give up his unique purpose in the world for the sake of secondary concerns. The call a poet feels is stronger than all temptations.
The dramatic author is in my eyes nothing but a historian, but superior to the latter in that he creates history a second time, and, instead of serving a dry narrative, transposes us directly into the life of an age, gives characters in instead of characteristics, and characters instead of descriptions.
What is poetry, if not creation / from an excess of noble feelings, / or superhuman aspiration / to become' of the new humanity / a new Prometheus who brings fire / from the sky.
Poetry is the morning of mankind, the history of uplifting sentiments, the constant exhortation to goodness and truth.
Poetry is action, intended to push thoughts forward.
Great works call us incessantly, like mountains and distances, like the mirage of the universal unknown...
Great works spring only from great souls, illuminated by great feelings.
Art... a revenge, a way to overcome a difficult fate by imposing form on it. We learn from it the mathematics of destiny, which means a means of freeing ourselves from it.
There is no revolutionary work without artistic greatness... Revolutionary art cannot do without artistic greatness without relapsing into the humblest forms of thought.
In all the circumstances of his life, obscure or enjoying a temporary celebrity, thrown into the chains of tyranny or free for a time to express himself, the writer can find the feeling of a living community which will justify him, provided only that he accepts as much as he can the two missions that give nobility to his job: the service of truth and that of freedom.
Art for me is not a solitary satisfaction. It remains a means of moving as many people as possible by giving them a privileged view of common sufferings and joys. As such, art forces the creator not to be an isolate, it submits him to the most humble and universal truth.
The artist creates himself in the perpetual and reciprocal movement from himself to others, halfway between the beauty that cannot be dispensed with and the collectivity from which it cannot be torn away. This is why true artists do not despise anything, they strive to understand instead of sanctioning.
The great artist is a man who lives life with intensity; to live, having in this case the meaning of reflecting on life, establishing that subtle relationship between the experience and the knowledge gained from it.
The dramatic work... the act of culture in which all people can find themselves.
Art... not the real alone, nor the imagination alone, but the imagination springing from the real.
To create—to seize raw elements from formless chaos, melt them together, and cast them into a form which clothes a life and differentiates itself absolutely from all that is not—this is the power of nature and of the artist.
The whole soul of the past lives in books. They are the clear and powerful voice of the past that is heard when the body and its material substance is gone.
The artist, the poet, the creator is himself; he lives his life as a man, as a citizen, he is subject to the conditions and circumstances of his age.
Art is superior to Nature and - in order to be - it cannot give up emphasizing the real to the ideal, that is, to aspire to the Beautiful, to the archetypal perfection, always and in everything.
Art for the people is not, however, to be confused with the art of popularization. There is no need to "go down", but to strengthen ourselves on the foundations.