Reflecții și Maxime vol. I.

Poetic fashion is a parasitic phenomenon of artistic mimicry, confined to strict actuality and therefore transient, which - rejecting the models of the predecessors and ostentatiously hunting for the new - always proposes other fetishes, pursues success instead of value, confuses originality with novelty, cultivates mannerism and cliché substance content, thus constituting a school of convenience and imposture.

Without some relationship, no matter how modest, with reality, with its appreciation or depreciation, therefore with a specific position, with a "tendency", there could not exist, in fact, any kind of art.

The poet... strange creature, having a third eye... who sees what other eyes do not. It also has an inner ear that hears the whisper of days and nights, what other ears do not hear...

The poet looks at a withered rose and sees in it the tragedy of the ages; watch a child run after a butterfly and find in it the secrets of the universe...

The poet is a loner. His clothing is simplicity, and his food is delicacy.

Any honest and truly artistic work that ennobles people's feelings and reflects a society as it is, serves the aspirations of socialism, which is not just a political party in the usual sense of the word, but an ideal, an aspiration for a better world.

Art is a historical product, demarcating the animal era from the human one.

Social ideas and tendencies are the very warm and nourishing blood that nourishes and makes alive the organism called Art.

A poet-artist does not live in the world of abstract conceptions but, more than anyone else, in the whirlwind of social life with its affects, its feelings, its hate and its love, with the struggle of special interests.

Art, like any manifestation of the human mind, is the product of the natural and especially social environment, it bears the stamp of the time in which it was created, of the society in which it was produced.

To be truly a poet of the people, much more is needed: the poet must be permeated by the spirit of the people, participate with his whole being in their life, stand on the same level with them, shake off all caste prejudices.. .

Literature owes its own content to life...but...life owes to literature its survival,...immortality.

Literature... the life that becomes self-conscious when the soul of a man of genius finds its fullness of expression.

You have to be a creator to be able to read well…

Literature is the meeting place of two souls.

The shape is beautiful, either! but when it is based on an idea; / What is a beautiful forehead if it does not hide a brain.

Let us enjoy the pleasures which art procures us: but never forsake the ineffable delights which the direct works of nature procure us: let us open our souls to the emotions which they inspire, even when we cannot analyze them.

Art is truly in nature; to possess it you must pluck it from there.

The poet... as long as he expresses only his few subjective feelings, he does not yet deserve the name of poet: but as soon as he succeeds in bringing his world closer and expressing it, he is a true poet. Then it is inexhaustible and can always be renewed, while a subjective nature quickly exhausts the little inner endowment it has and falls into mannerism, destroying itself.

In art...he who wants to accomplish something great must have reached such a degree of culture that, like the ancient Greeks, he is unable to raise real nature, inferior to him, to the height of his spirit and to transform into reality what in some natural phenomena, either because of who knows which inherent weakness, or because of some external obstacles, could not be fully realized, remaining only a simple intention.

The conscientious artist will choose what is eternally human, eternally symbolic, eternally valid in the unfolding of a nation.

The artist who does not put emotion into his art will never succeed in emoting. Art is synthesis, a concentration of emotions, an intensified emotion, received and transmitted to others through a personal magic. It is not simply the recording of impressions, but their transfiguration, their elevation to maximum potency.

What we ourselves add to a work of art constitutes its vibration and halo without our soul accompaniment, all music remains a mere mechanism.

To be a poet, you don't immediately need to rhyme and rhythm, that is, to write in verse... Poetry is a vocation. It is the expression, it is the soul predisposition of a man inclined to Dream, of an Artist who puts beauty in everything he does, of a Man with a special sensitivity and with a special gift of choosing the enveloping word in which to clothe his thought, his fantasy , aspirations, reveries.

Put poetry in the most insignificant actions of your life, not only in stanzas on paper, and you will rise. Write only when your heart is too full and let it pour out in rhythm and cadence. Let the brain help the heart. Let the mind guide the soul.

What is art for?... First of all, for the education of feelings. Of course, man is educated by science, work, family, and the environment, but without art it is difficult to remove indifference, to awaken his beautiful feelings, to root out the ugly ones. Science develops in man the ability to think, and art sensitizes him.

It would be the death of art if all the successors of an artist forced themselves to follow the procedures of the "great master".

What is important in art is, strictly speaking, neither reality as it presents itself, nor the special way of feeling of the artist, but his special way of knowing how to embody apart from his feeling...

Each artistic creation therefore involves three moments: the moment of external reality, the moment of the artist's inspiration, the moment of execution...

The work is... the individual reality soaked in the soul, in the personality of the artist... An incarnation (or, if you like, a sensible embodiment apart from the artist, which represents in itself, merged, the two individualities...: the outer individuality, that inspired the artist, and the individuality or personality of the artist…