I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of complex narratives in conveying deeper truths beyond mere entertainment.
Stephen Greenblatt's quote reflects his belief that narratives, even when broken or complicated, serve as powerful mediums for communicating essential truths about the subjects he is passionate about. While he enjoys entertainment, he prioritizes the narrative's ability to express what matters, indicating that stories can be much more than just enjoyable, but also meaningful and significant.
In practice
During a lecture on storytelling techniques, this quote can highlight the value of narratives in connecting with audiences on deeper issues.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.
What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.
Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.
First you study photography, then you practice photography, then you serve photography, and finally one becomes photography.
Hollywood is a very volatile place where artists come in, and they essentially say they want to belong. It's incredibly vulnerable to be an actor and also get criticism at a young age when you're formulating who you are. We've seen a lot of people fall victim to that, and it's very unfortunate.
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons.
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