Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the emotional responses to nature and the changing seasons in relation to human experience.
Wallace Stevens' quote captures the transition from the desolation of winter to the vibrancy of summer, using imagery to evoke a sense of renewal and artistic creation. The mention of the statue of Jove being blown up symbolizes a transformation, where the complexities of human mental struggles are reconciled with the beauty and vastness of nature, ultimately suggesting that art and emotional expression arise from these experiences.
Themes
SpaceEmotionSeasonsNatureArtistic CreationTransformation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of nature in art during a poetry reading.
More from Wallace Stevens
All quotes →Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
Wallace StevensRead
After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Wallace StevensRead
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Wallace StevensRead
LIGHT FROM WITHIN my friend, cancer got you damn it: you had it beat for seven years at least. how did it come back? Why all that pain. again. and you, such a fighter you fought me over and over with tears and words and promises. you fought for me with honesty and a light so bright it hurts my heart. sweet lorna. at peace now finally no more battles, just light from within a flickering candle in the dark burns with you.
Wallace StevensRead
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
Wallace StevensRead
Similar quotes
The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.
Milan KunderaRead
The film drama is the opium of the people…down with bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!
Dziga VertovRead
I'm very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.
Billy CollinsRead
Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste. I cannot help wincing as I drink. Ascent of flowers, radiance and heat, are distilled here to a fiery, yellow liquid. Just behind my shoulder-blades some dry thing, wide-eyed, gently closes, gradually lulls itself to sleep. This is rapture. This is relief.
Virginia WoolfRead
Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.
Billy CorganRead
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
William ShakespeareRead