Ezra Pound

When you start searching for __ure elements_ in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons: Inventors. Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process. The masters. Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors. The diluters. Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn__ do the job quite as well. Good writers without salient qualities. Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is __ealthy_. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante__ time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare__ time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how. Writers of belles-lettres. That is, men who didn__ really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn__ be considered as __reat men_ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch. The starters of crazes.Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able __o see the wood for the trees_. He may know what he __ikes_. He may be a __ompleat book-lover_, with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, but he will never be able to sort out what he knows to estimate the value of one book in relation to others, and he will be more confused and even less able to make up his mind about a book where a new author is __reaking with convention_ than to form an opinion about a book eighty or a hundred years old.He will never understand why a specialist is annoyed with him for trotting out a second- or third-hand opinion about the merits of his favourite bad writer.

Literature is language charged with meaning

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:Don't kick against the pricks,Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

Great Literature is simply language charged to the utmost with meaning

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation.

Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone can truly be,For 'tis in dream I come to thee.Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe i sogni solo possono veramente essere,Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m__vvio.

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

Listen to me, attend me!And I will breathe into thee a soul,And thou shalt live for ever.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

Literature is news that stays news.

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.