Literature, to be understood, must be considered in its development, by which I do not mean self-development. Experimental phases can then be noted, in which an often almost unbearable narrowing of perspective occurs, one-sided or rather few-sided products emerge, and the applicability of results becomes problematic. There are experiments which come to nothing and experiments which bear late fruits or paltry fruits. One sees artists who sink under the burden of their materials— conscientious people who see the magnitude of the task, do not shirk it, but are inadequate for it. They do not always perceive their own errors…The world has reason to be impatient with these people and it makes abundant use of this right. But it also has reason to show patience towards them.
In art there is the fact of failure, and the fact of partial success…Works of art can fail so easily; it is so difficult for them to succeed. One man will fall silent because of a lack of feeling; another, because his emotion chokes him. A third frees himself, not from the burden that weighs on him, but only from the feeling of unfreedom. A fourth breaks his tools because they have been used too long to exploit him. The world is not obliged to be sentimental. Defeats should be acknowledged; but one should not conclude from them that there should be no more struggles.
“
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Bertolt Brecht, excerpted from “On the Formalistic Character of the Theory of Realism.” (Located in: “Presentation II: Brecht Against Lukacs.”Aesthetics and Politics,pp. 76-7)
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We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.
“
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Samuel Beckett, Watt (1943)
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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
“
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Sara Teasdale, ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ (via missfolly
)
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Random Thoughts: Need a title
Dreams are a fistful of glowing embers
charring the fate-lines on my palm;
I hold them dear
not to let them die of cold-
shoulders meant to rest a head
full of bruised imaginations,
carry coffins of hopes
fallen from a sky once replete
with rollicking stars.
And the moon
that swelled with pride every night
we conversed
seems to have suffered a memory loss;
it stares me blank,
its countenance, oddly pale.
Richard Brautigan, “The Second Kingdom”
sharingpoetry:
In the first kingdom
of the stars,
everything is always
half-beautiful.
Your fingernails
are angels
sleeping after
a long night
of making love.
The sound of
your eyes: snow
coming down
the stairs
of the wind.
Your hair
is the color
of God picking
flowers.
In the second
kingdom of the stars
there is only
you.
(Submitted by davidsatin)
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
