The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of th...e craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry is the heaven of the working reason. Poetry is a divination of the spiritual in the things of sense--which expresses itself... in the things of sense, and in a delight of sense. Metaphysics also pursues a spiritual prey, but metaphysics is engaged in abstract knowledge, while poetry quickens art. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened through intelligence. Metaphysics enjoys its possession only in the retreats of the eternal regions, while poetry finds its own at every crossroad in the wanderings of the contingent and the singular. The more real the reality, the superreal (I would not give up this word to the Surrealists), the superreal which both seek, metaphysics must attain in the nature of things, while it suffices to poetry to touch it in any sign whatsoever. Metaphysics gives chase to essences and definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by the way, and any reflection of an invisible order.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seem...s it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is... the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, ...it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »