A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
Interpretation
The essence of a writer's role is to prioritize the language in their work above all else.
In this quote, Joseph Brodsky emphasizes the fundamental responsibility of a writer, which is to focus on the craft of language. By stating that writing well is the writer's only duty, he asserts that the quality and precision of language are paramount to effective communication and artistic expression.
In practice
In a creative writing workshop to inspire aspiring authors.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.
Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: βThere is the surface. Now think β or rather feel, intuit β what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.β Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy
To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky.
I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.
Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.
The more I've gotten interested in writing about history and making sense of myself within the continuum of history, the more I've turned to paintings, to art. I look to the imagery of art to help me understand something about my own place in the world.
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