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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.

Ezra Pound

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

Art Curiosity Letters Survive Willing
If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.
EZRA POUND

Artist Build Creation Equality Money World
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.
EZRA POUND

Ability Existence Function Literature Main Writing
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance, poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
EZRA POUND

Beginning Dance Far Music Poetry
With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.
EZRA POUND

Day Hands Key Man Reading
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
EZRA POUND

Artist Category Herself Nature Paragraph Serious
The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
EZRA POUND

Argument Oneself People Start Technique Truth
The only history that matters is the history we know.
EZRA POUND

History Known
Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
EZRA POUND

Art Goodness Immoral Precise True Virtue
It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
EZRA POUND

Artist Aware Business Humanity
Religion I have defined as “Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art”.
EZRA POUND

Art Definition Failure Myself Popular Religion
Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.
EZRA POUND

Ability Art Genius Himself Man Material Ordinary Perception Talent
Small talk comes from small bones.
EZRA POUND

Body Bone Small Talk
What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
EZRA POUND

Himself Hold Ideas Man
The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.
EZRA POUND

Book Generation Learning Lost Transmitted
Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.
EZRA POUND

Average Cheap Desire Mediocre

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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