The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which... does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blake and Goethe were individualists par excellence, uncompromisingly protective of their single vision. In both Faust Part II and... The Four Zoas, emphasis on the universality of the poet's message contrasts with the resistant texture of a compressed style and the striking complexity of the mythological machinery. Blake likes to emphasize that he is not writing for the simple-minded; Goethe takes a teasing pleasure in keeping philologists busy. Faust and The Four Zoas are dramatic epics of Humanity, but embodied in a mythic language whose uniqueness and quirkiness are jealously guarded. Blake never published The Four Zoas, though it culminates his early prophecies and provides the indispensable key to the later ones. And Goethe refused to allow Faust Part II to be printed in its entirety until after his death. Both poets postponed the public's discovery of their central works; secrecy was enforced as long as it could be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us say, then, that both the realist and the antirealist accept the results of scientific investigations as "true," on a par wi...th more homely truths.... And call this acceptance of scientific truths the "core position." What distinguishes realists from antirealists, then, is what they add onto this core position ... a third alternative emerges--and an attractive one at that. It is the core position itself, and all by itself.... Let me introduce the acronym NOA (pronounced as in "Noah"), for natural ontological attitude, and, henceforth, refer to the core position under that designation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,... Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and combs its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flights, Waves in its plumes the various light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, n...ot only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well then! Wagner was a revolutionary--he fled the Germans.... As an artist one has no home in Europe outside Paris: the délicate...sse in all five artistic senses that is presupposed by Wagner's art, the fingers for nuances, the psychological morbidity are found only in Paris. Nowhere else is this passion in questions of form to be found, this seriousness in mise en scène--which is Parisian seriousness par excellence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and... the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »