Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
A notion abounds that difficult writing—archaic, convoluted, or chock-full of esoteric words—is somehow elevated, more intelligent than plainspoken language. If you can’t understand it, it must be really superior. Vonnegut based more than one novel on the absurdity of such premises.
Kurt Vonnegut • Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style
I know the bright baptismal rains, I love your tender troubled skies,
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'
'No, what?' I would say. '
A piece of dust.'
Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.'
A
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Apart he stalked in joyless reverie … With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe, And e’en for change of scene would seek the shades below.16fn1 There was in him a vital scorn of all … He stood a stranger in this breathing world … So much he soared beyond, or sunk beneath, The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe …17
Isaiah Berlin • The Roots of Romanticism
Proust était resté radicalement européen, un des derniers Européens avec Thomas Mann ; ce qu'il écrivait n'avait plus aucun rapport avec une réalité quelconque. La phrase sur la duchesse de Guermantes restait magnifique, évidemment. Il n'empêche que tout cela devenait un peu déprimant, et j'ai fini par me tourner vers Baudelaire. L'angoisse, la
... See moreMichel Houellebecq • Les particules élémentaires (French Edition)
Tennyson, as we see him in his poem, may be compared to the Western scientist who seeks the truth by means of dismembering life.
Erich Fromm • To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
