How happy are the ages and serene works! But when the age is troubled and the nation struggles, art is bound to fight side by side with it, to enkindle it, to lead it, to remove the fears and wipe out the prejudices that might obstruct its way...
It is not in the view of art to suppress the struggle, but to enrich life, to make it stronger, bigger, better. Everything that comes into enmity with life also comes with art. And if it is true that love and union are her goal, it is no less true that sometimes it could be her weapon...
Any great artist, even the most individualized, is more than an individual man. In him there are several twinned personalities, always harmonized, which realize, side by side, their essence. In this respect, however, the artist differs from other people only in the power of expression.
He who does not strongly hate evil, will not effectively know how to love good. And the one who sees the injustices, without at the same time trying everything to combat them, cannot be the whole artist, nor the whole man.
There are great artists who only express themselves. But the greatest of all are those whose hearts beat for all.
The poet... is and can only be a contemporary.
The art of a country represents the sum total of its social virtues and ethical forces.
A true artist is the one in whose soul the voice of the original self, that is, of the depths, has managed to overwhelm the voice of the derived self, that is, of the superficial layers.
The whole nation may perish, with its deeds of heroism, with its language and beliefs, with its sacrifices and ideals. Nothing may remain of it, like a sign written in the sand of the desert. Only the word of a great poet can be destined to endure in future ages, and to the holy song of his pain and joy can be linked the joys and sorrows of the deepest future generations, in other ages and in other civilizations. And the memory of the nation and the land that gave birth to him can be linked to his name.
The work of any writer carries within itself the unsuspected power or the seeds of decay, and nothing can be worked for or against it. Now or later justice is done.
Undoubtedly, our tradition has its foundations. Western literatures emerged from something else; from a certain spiritual and social order came ours.
We are not of those who are afraid of new things, because progress is a general law in all manifestations of life. We value novelty especially in art, because the original part that the artist brings is his most important title...
The book accomplishes not only the wonder of bringing us into contact with our fellows far apart in time and space: the book accomplishes the wonder of making us live apart from lies, injustice, and prejudice.
In these sacred urns, in which poets and thinkers have enclosed their hearts, we find that deathless power which moves humanity forward in its ceaseless progress...
Between calamities and catastrophes, noble people who are no longer give accumulated strength in their works to fight for truth, social justice and peace.
We have to distinguish where the border is between art and pathological manifestations, with their exaggerations that lead to the absurd. Admitting any boldness in the domain of poetry as versification and syntactic renewal, it is clearly necessary to reject verbal anarchy...
The word is a means of communication of ideas and feelings. By breaking the logical connection of speech, you announce a pathological condition, if you are sincere, and a great intellectual poverty, if you are an imitator.
Inevitably and regardless of the artist's intentions, the arts are an exalted hymn to existence.
I believe in two poems of life: the poetry of writing and the poetry of work. And I also believe that the writer must be in permanent contact with life, with its pains, with its joys, with its defeats.
A writer must be a social fighter. He must continually be closely connected with the social complex in which he lives... Writers of my generation must convince themselves, at the present moment, that they can only make art with tendency and that there is no other art. In this trend, however, let us introduce the maximum of art, because only in this way will our works retain their viability.
The feeling of art implies a vivid and intimate feeling of things. While most people remain on the surface and apparent, while philosophers themselves recognize and ascertain a je ne sais quoi beyond phenomena, without being able to determine its nature, the artist, as if endowed with a sense apart, he feels beneath the apparent world the other, entirely inner world, which most ignore and whose existence philosophers are content to ascertain: he exists at the invisible play of forces and sympathizes with them, as if they were souls; he received, from birth, the key of symbols and the understanding of figures; what seems incoherent and contradictory to others is, for him, only a harmonic contrast, a distant chord on the universal lyre. He himself soon enters into this great concert, and, like the bronze vessels of ancient theaters, accompanies the echo of his voice with the music of the world.
Keep your youth - you will have poetry.
Before we are artists, let's try to be people.
A writer is the product of his innate temperament and the particular environment in which he has lived.
Art exists only through and for the other... Creation finds its completion only in reading, because the artist must entrust to another the care of fulfilling what he has begun.
To write is to add a pearl to the necklace of the Muses, to leave posterity the memory of an exemplary life, to defend the people against itself and against its enemies.
Any act of writing is a deep commitment.
As the writer has no means of escape, we want him to embrace his age closely: it is his only chance: it is made for him and he is made for it... We do not want to miss anything of our age : perhaps there are others more beautiful, but this is ours: we have only this life to live...
Reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader, each trusts the other, each counts on the other, demands from the other what it demands from itself... The work exists only at the exact level of the real capabilities of the lecturer.
Any book is a total recovery of the being.