Art... to express and bring to consciousness the deepest interests of man, the most penetrating truths of the spirit.
Every work of art belongs to its time, to its people, to its environment, and depends on particular historical representations and purposes or on other representations and purposes.
Philosophy and art... are close spiritual spheres, they are ways of expressing... the deepest interests of man, the most comprehensive truths of the spirit. In works of art peoples have stored their inner representations and intuitions richest in valuable content, and the key to the understanding of wisdom and religion is often given by the fine arts, and, in some peoples, exclusively by them.
The essence of art is poetry... The essence of poetry is the establishment of truth, and as such it is historical.
Poetry is the telling of being... it is the founding of being through the word.
Art is the enactment of truth.
What is the most important thing in art? The one that is most prominent in the other manifestations of life: the proud freedom of thought.
There is something in music that amazes us; I might even say it's a miracle. Music lies between idea and embodiment; as a nebulous intercessor she places herself between spirit and matter; it is related to both and yet different from them; it is spirit, but a spirit that needs the measure of time; it's matter, but matter that can lack space...
Music is perhaps the last word of art, as death is the last word of life.
The arts keep pace with the gradual spiritualization of the human race.
The poet:... gentleman in the land of dreams.
Language alone unites, strengthens and defines the nation; deal with it above all, and you will thereby do nothing but the most fundamental politics, lay the foundations of nationality.
Art and beauty would be empty words if man were completely happy and could dispense with the illusion of happiness, just as he would no longer strive towards it always, tormentingly, in vain, through religion, morality and science.
Form means a lot in art, but not everything. The most beautiful forms of antiquity are animated by a spirit, a great idea, which makes form form and reveals itself in it as in its body. Remove this soul, and the form is a mask...
The poetic form especially is so dependent on thought and feeling that without them it presents itself only as a beautifully chiseled block.
Art is in human nature. All his dispositions can and must in time acquire the form of artistic perfection.
Perfect music... It comes from balance. Balance comes from right, right comes from the meaning of things. That's why you can talk about music only with a man who has learned the meaning of the world.
There is no higher goal of art than to ignite in man the spark of that delight that frees his entire being from all suffering, from the overwhelming pressure of everyday life...
When I listen to music, I find an analogy and an intimate encounter between colors, sounds and scents. It seems to me that all things were conceived by the same ray of light, and that they must come together in a wonderful concert.
Art purifies and elevates man in such a way that he raises his head with pride and joy, perceives and even achieves direct contact with the divine.
Poetry is... a taking possession of the real, a first resettling and widening of the boundaries of reality in our understanding.
The theater is an optical point. Everything that exists in the world, in history, in life, in man, everything must and can be reflected in himself.
Art browses the ages, browses nature, searches the chronicles, strives to reproduce the reality of facts, especially that of morals and characters...
Thus the purpose of art is almost divine; to resurrect, if it is history; to create, if it's poetry...
A new people needs a new art.
A poet is... a world enclosed in a man.
Art for art's sake can be beautiful, but art for progress is even more beautiful. A few art lovers, attached to a concern that otherwise has its own dignity and nobility, reject this formula: art for progress, the beautiful useful, fearing that its useful will not deform the beautiful... The useful, however, is far from limiting the sublime, amplifies it... How so? Would art lose its value by becoming more inclusive? Not. An extra service means an extra beauty...
Poiesis is a playful function. It takes place in a mind-play space, in a world of its own that the mind creates, a world in which things have a different appearance than in "ordinary life" and are connected to each other by ties other than logic...
If we admit that seriousness is what can be properly expressed in terms of objective life, then poetry never becomes serious. It is in that part of seriousness, in that more original part where the child, the animal, the savage and the visionary have their place, that is, in the realm of dream, ecstasy, drunkenness and laughter...
To understand the poem you have to clothe yourself in the soul of the child, as in an enchanted shirt, and admit that the wisdom of the child is above that of the man...