A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.
Interpretation
The quote explores the relationship between emotion and poetry, suggesting that true artistic expression arises from a balance of genuine feelings and intellectual understanding.
Fernando Pessoa reflects on how different types of emotions influence the creation of poetry. He argues that while great emotions can overshadow the ability to express oneself artistically, strong and fleeting emotions can inspire immediate creativity. Additionally, he emphasizes that deeply felt memories of emotions can also fuel artistic expression. Ultimately, he suggests that even emotions that are processed intellectually can lead to sincere art, as they represent a transformed form of true emotion.
In practice
In a literary workshop discussing how emotion fuels creativity, this quote can be used to highlight the balance between feeling and expression.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.
Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.
Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the unclear voices of children, already gathered like crikets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
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