Sunday, August 29, 2004
August 29, 2004
"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal."
- Françoise Sagan (b. 1935), French novelist and playwright: interview in "Writers at Work" (First Series, edited by Malcolm Cowley), 1958.
"What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches."
- Jean Genet (1910 – 1986), French playwright and novelist: introduction to "Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson", 1970.
"Literature… is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself."
- Paul de Man (1919 – 1983), Belgian-born American literary critic: "Allegories of Reading", 1979.
"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal."
- Françoise Sagan (b. 1935), French novelist and playwright: interview in "Writers at Work" (First Series, edited by Malcolm Cowley), 1958.
"What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches."
- Jean Genet (1910 – 1986), French playwright and novelist: introduction to "Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson", 1970.
"Literature… is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself."
- Paul de Man (1919 – 1983), Belgian-born American literary critic: "Allegories of Reading", 1979.
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