It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers have a crucial role in society that corresponds to their writing skills.
Ezra Pound emphasizes that literature and writing are deeply connected to the social context in which they are created. He suggests that authors have an important responsibility to society that is directly linked to their talent and abilities, indicating that their work has practical implications beyond mere artistic expression.
Themes
LiteratureSocial FunctionWritersResponsibilityArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of artists in society, this quote can highlight the importance of literature.
More from Ezra Pound
All quotes βThe ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
Ezra PoundRead
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
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In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra PoundRead
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Ezra PoundRead
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
Ezra PoundRead
Similar quotes
Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.
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All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
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There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
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If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?
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As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
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There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.
Ian McewanRead