Literature and Words

Etiam disiecti membra poetae.

Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.

Ut pictura poesis.

Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

Semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res Non secus ac notas auditorem rapit.

Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba.

Grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est.

Brevis esse laboro,

Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis Purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter Adsuitur pannus.

Winged words.

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

The land of spices; something understood.

Who says that fictions only and false hair

Dort, wo man Bücher

Between my finger and my thumb

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

The proletarian state must bring up thousands of excellent ‘mechanics of culture’, ‘engineers of the soul’.

Die Wahlverwandtschaften.

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca what were you doing down by the watermelons?

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt

The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.