The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Jean CocteauRead
The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
Interpretation
Creation involves embracing contradictions to reveal deeper truths beyond what is immediately visible.
Jean Cocteau suggests that the act of creation is inherently tied to the presence of contradictions. By challenging our perceptions and transcending superficial appearances, true creativity emerges, allowing us to uncover unknown realities and explore new artistic expressions.
In practice
In a speech about artistic innovation, this quote highlights the necessity of embracing contradictions.
The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
Stories aren't the icing on the cake; they are the cake!
Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much.
The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain β and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.
But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
I kept thinking there's bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it.
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