...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy of criticism.
Interpretation
The quote critiques critics who complain about the lack of quality in art while failing to appreciate existing works.
Sylvia Plath's quote reflects on the paradox of modern criticism, where critics decry the absence of significant artistic works worthy of analysis. This suggests that instead of merely lamenting the state of contemporary art, critics should engage more deeply with the works available and acknowledge the value and complexity present in them.
In practice
During an art exhibition, one might quote Plath to highlight the importance of engaging with the artwork rather than critiquing its absence.
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
There's so many films from around the world, I emphasize, that are so beautifully photographed, but they don't get the recognition.
Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.
Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.
There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.
Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'readymades aided' and also works of assemblage.
The regular division of the plane into congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is one of these hobbies or problems...I have embarked on this geometric problem again and again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occurred to me; one might say that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why.
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