The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contrast between the naive straightforwardness of children and lunatics and the complex, often convoluted process poets undergo to understand life.
In this quote, Jean Cocteau suggests that while children and those deemed 'lunatics' can easily make sense of life's complexities, often through creative or unconventional means, poets spend their lives delicately unraveling the intricate threads of existence. This speaks to the notion that creativity and insight can sometimes come from a place of simplicity or madness, contrasting with the laborious and thoughtful analysis that is typically associated with artistic endeavors.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the nature of creativity in a classroom setting.
More from Jean Cocteau
All quotes βOne must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
Similar quotes
You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.
I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality; I am conscious of eternal life.
True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.
We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.
For sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled.
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that ... you really must make the self. It is absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it. I don't mean in the sense of making a mask, a Yeatsian mask. But you finally begin in some sense to make and choose the self you want.