The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.
Interpretation
The creative process reveals its true depth only upon completion, much like nature's growth.
This quote by Carson McCullers explores the intricate and often subconscious journey of creating art. The author suggests that a work of art evolves in dimensions and complexity as it is created, akin to the natural growth of a plant from a seed. It emphasizes the importance of both conscious effort and the unconscious inspirations that contribute to artistic expression. The metaphor of a 'flowering dream' illustrates how ideas develop quietly over time, culminating in a rich and nuanced final creation.
In practice
During an art exhibition, one could use this quote to explain the artist's creative process.
Wherever you look there’s meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear—and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed—stupid and mean.
There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.
She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world, and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky: alone.
The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.
Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons--throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.
Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.
When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested in telling the story and also very worried about the effects the story would have.
The music industry is a matrix that is counter to what is natural and right.
My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people.
Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.
By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.
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