This primordial nature of poetry, already understood by Vico two centuries ago, is closest to the pure notion of play.
Poetic language differs from ordinary language in that it intentionally expresses itself in special images that not everyone understands...
Any language is an expression in images. The chasm between existence and understanding cannot be crossed unless the spark of imagination intervenes... The figurative word envelops things with the rays of understanding. But while the language of ordinary life, as a practical and general-use tool, ceaselessly blunts the plasticity of all expression and reaches a strictly logical autonomy in appearance, poetry continues to intentionally cultivate the plasticity of language...
The writer: ... an observer, an organizer, and a transmitter of the general experiences lived by himself and others, in the lights of nature, culture, and language.
Expressing his own personality, the artist also expresses the pattern in which this personality was shaped and thus becomes the expression of several factors: race, social class. era, so the expression of a phase in human evolution.
Art is for man an instrument of self-transcendence: because man is not only what he actually is; he seeks to be something other than what he is. If this effort did not exist, humanity would stagnate and be no more interesting than mineral matter...
Art represents a major human need because it makes palpable the fundamental search for the best, the search for value.
There is a truth to the raw material of art - nature, the real; but there is also a truth of the way to introduce it into the work, which is reason.
We are grateful to the artist for saying so clearly what we have always felt but have not been able to express.
The world that literature depicts must be the world in which human beings are born, live, and ultimately die; the world where I know triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and joys, of madness and common sense, of folly, cunning and wisdom, of reason in battle with passion, of instincts and conventions, of common language and incommunicable sensations and feelings; of innate differentiations, rules, roles, solemn or absurd rituals imposed by the prevailing culture.
The ability to attempt poetic impressions is common. The ability to give poetic expression to poetic impressions is very rare.
A writer... must be of his era.
Great poetry is, and is nothing else, than the tragic thrill in the face of life.
Any work of art is a philosophy on life or a "criticism of life".
The artist creates with all his personality; his world of images - both in its storage and in its reproduction in the work of art - is conditioned by his feelings and conceptions of life...what determines his associations of images are the feelings and conceptions...; an artist has preferences, likes and dislikes, which are revealed in his creation.
Basically, morality is also an aesthetic. For if artistic contemplation has a moral value, how much more will the very creation of beauty, in itself or without. Art creates it outside, virtue itself. Virtue makes life an object of art.
The aesthetic value of a literary work is closely related to its specific originality of substance and form. It can be said that between two writers of equal native talent, the one will be greater, in whose work the soul of the people will be felt more strongly and the realities of material life will be more richly reflected.
The true creator is up to a point irresponsible for his creation, because he is dominated by it. He only stylizes it. Characters are born and, above all, develop according to their own will and nature.
The word art evokes more consciousness, more will, more chiseling, a stricter composition, while the word poetry evokes more feeling, more abandon, more inspiration...
The artist puts us more in the state of a spectator; the poet, more like a participant. You admire the artist; the poet moves you, you feel him "brother", and admiration follows after reflection...
The pleasure caused by the artist is more intellectual; the one produced by the poet - more emotional. Art is more Apollonian, poetry more Dionysian...
Through the impression produced, art is more like painting, sculpture and especially architecture, because it addresses more the senses, imagination, fantasy; poetry is more like music, because it addresses itself more to emotionality - ultimately, to the unconscious...
A creator does not copy reality, but realizes his conception of reality...
This conception, of course, has as its starting point certain notes from reality, certain attributes of man or time, and the creator builds on these notes or attributes. He builds according to his temperament, his culture, his morals, his philosophy, his senses, his prejudices and his cenesthesia, his psychic moment, his relation to society, his family, his lover, and his style, for the psychic material is selected by - and adapted to the possibilities of each one's style, and "the style is the man", i.e. the writer, each with his style, i.e.... with his personality...
So the creator selects, transfigures what he has selected, transforms everything into something new and very personal...
Artists are all more or less romantics, and they can't stand bourgeois platitudes and dominant reality. Then the artist is by his very nature excessively at extreme positions: either reactionary or revolutionary.
The act of poetic creation shows better than anything how complex the human soul is and what role the unconscious plays in soul life.
A writer is a disciple of the whole literature and especially of the writers with whom he has a soul kinship and therefore, he likes, convinces, frequents and from whom he cannot but learn. But the original writer owes so much to the masters.
Masterpieces are not made to take your eyes. They are made to persuade, to convince, to enter us through all the pores.
Art is never in so high a degree of perfection than when it so strongly resembles nature that it may be taken for nature itself...