Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress.
Blaise CendrarsRead
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing requires deep exploration and often presents a distorted view of reality.
In this quote, Blaise Cendrars compares writing to the perilous task of mining, emphasizing the challenges and risks involved in the creative process. The metaphor suggests that while writing can provide insight and illumination, it also comes with the potential for misrepresentation and the struggle against fatigue and danger, much like a miner faces with his lamp in the dark depths of a mine.
Themes
WritingCreativityArtExplorationMining
In practice
Example use cases
In a creative writing workshop to inspire students.
More from Blaise Cendrars
All quotes →My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe
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Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.
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I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.
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One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.
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