Reflecții și Maxime vol. I.

Poets are ethereal beings, living not in an overworld, but in our world, living and creative beings of pure humanity, from whom the sweetness of relief is demanded and obtained.

The poet is formed in the double and yet unique movement of finding out his connections with the tradition of poetry, resuming, with his own voice, the eternal motive that poetry seeks, and to search and discover his own originality, his own personality, his own mission, making his own voice ring out with purity.

Without the exact dimension of the national character of a work of art, there can be no question of its integration into universality.

Any artist worthy of this name strives without ceasing, with all his forces, towards progress, towards perfection. Perfection is the supreme, ideal, unattainable goal that shines like a beacon on the stormy seas of art. It drives the true artist to work better and better in order to be happy. Striving for perfection is synonymous with aspiring to happiness, to the ultimate happiness, which is a mirage just as perfection is, at least in this adventure of our life.

Who says art, says poetry... There is no art without a poetic target.

Art must be free, infinitely free... the freedom of the artist is a religion, just like political freedom.

Any change, any innovation in literature is a sign of soul liberation, it's like a conquest of thought beyond the borders between which time has kept them shackled.

When we find ourselves in front of a literary work, what we ask is to give us the opportunity to intervene with our personality, to add our soul to that of the author.

If artists are told: "look around you and you will find plenty to inspire you", another piece of advice should complement these words: "look also behind and try to see in what world the artists stopped their of old their soul and what remained of what they meant in the lines of a book, on the face of a canvas or a block of marble".

To a writer... man is interesting more in what raises him above others than in what brings him close to them.

Free verse - the true verse of this kind, because many have been written and are being written that do not deserve the name - are based on the principle of internal harmony, of musicality tight between the smallest parts that make them up; their rhythm, varied or capricious at first sight, is of a unity, of a condensation which only one with old-school prejudices cannot recognize.

Well applied, free verse ends up producing musical effects previously unknown in poetry...

In traditional verse the main harmonic element is the rhyme: it is continuously followed by the poet as well as the reader; but rhyme is only a partial harmony - final harmony - of the verses; nevertheless, a lot of value was placed and is placed on it in ordinary versification, and that is why how many did not think they were poets only because they rhymed with some skill!...

From this it followed that the other element, harmony and the most important, rhythm, was not always given due attention - if the rhyme finally produced its effect, the poet was satisfied, he did not always care if the rhythm was correct...

If free verse is a refinement of rhythmic harmony and pays more attention to the way words are associated, in all respects, it is certain that it is called to play a significant role in the development of the literary language, in the efforts to ennoble it.

I call him a poet who feels, disturbed, that a whole world of forms and images stirs within him: first fluctuating forms, without precise determinations, rays of light not yet reflected, not yet organized into the bright colors of the rainbow, scattered sounds that they produce no harmony...

Only in the poet does that fantastic world persist, and it takes possession of his soul, and it stirs inside him, impatient to burst forth...

There is a solemn moment in life when man reveals himself. We need something to catch our eyes in order to have this revelation, to be able to say to ourselves one day: This is what we were born for...

Dante's life begins the moment his eyes meet Beatrice's. And when he saw her for the second time, when he remembered with emotion the strong impression she had made on his soul, while still a child, his art was revealed to him and he became a poet...

In love above all, the poet can bring to fulfillment and calm that world obscured by phantasms, which boils within him; because glory, liberty, country, which have so much power over the soul, cannot be represented unless they acquire the appearance of a living being; only in love does the soul find itself in another soul; only in love does what is otherwise only an image become reality.

Art, by taking control of this world, humanizes it, brings it closer to man and nature.

A truly great artist is only one who unites in himself a great intelligence, a great spirit and a great talent. Someone who is small as a person cannot be a great artist.

More or less, any great work of literary art is, in one way or another, a case of conscience, and literary activity is nothing but a permanent examination of conscience. In this lies its value, because only such a lyrical-psychological examination, and not a purely intellectual, ethical, sociological or I know how else, shakes, awakens, sets something in motion, there, in the intimate and deep forum of man . But the ability to carry out this synthesis of great intelligence, great spirit and great talent is naturally given only to the great.

Banality is the death of art. Only one thing can be worse than her: the sought-after originality.

Realism is the most difficult formula of art, because it means to reflect reality. The most difficult flight is the low flight. Only the swallow can fly low. Only talents can make realistic art.

That / which from common thought / wondrous interpretations distil, / and gathers so many essences / from known species, dead on the threshold, / of which we did not take note, / that we wonder that we ourselves / did not do this before . / He who reveals the appearance / of all - is the Poet.

At the foundation of poetic creation is personal experience, the understanding of foreign realities, the broadening and deepening of experience through ideas. The starting point of poetic creation is always life experience, as a personal experience or as an understanding of other people, contemporaries or of the past, as well as of the events in which they acted together.

Art...makes us understand each other better, in what we have more personally, to broaden our horizons beyond our own soul life. The geniuses of soul life reveal to each of us his own inner life. And they allow us to glimpse inside a foreign world, to which we are nevertheless related. In the fullness of these poetic individualities, we sense the richness of human interiority.

Poetry is the representation and expression of life.

For the poet, humanity is present in that he experiences human existence through himself and tries to understand it as it appears to him from the outside. The visionary gaze of the true poet rises, through comprehension, towards infinity. For in understanding he transmits to the foreign existence all his inner experience.