Mieczyslaw Jastrun
Quotations
Art cannot progress by sticking to what is already familiar.
Environment grinds us, forces us to adjust, and--consciously or not--kills our most precious possession: that something which enables us to speak with ourselves and with God.
From laboratories employing complex apparatus, poetry often emerges into the outside world after a long lapse of time, just as some scientific discoveries become common property only after they have entered the blood stream of the generations.
In the end, time is the best ally of poets. It clarifies their works and makes them accessible to an ever widening circle of readers.
It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past.
Poetry, in the entire course of its development, has always been trying to capture meanings and problems which are still obscure and dormant. Poetry tries to awaken them with a kiss, wherever they may be: in the air, in things, in human beings.
Since he can absorb the world with all its various idioms, a genuine poet thrives on being alone. Isolation assures him of a clear vision undulled by anyone's presence, and the fact that his room may be peopled with the voices of the present, past, and future generations offers no contradiction.
Solitude is an essential element of poetry.
Talent--that is to say, the ability to see the world in a unique way--matures and grows in isolation.
The age of sages is past; the age of specialists has come.
The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.
The history of the creative progress of individual artists shows that, along with their spiritual growth and the increasing complexity of their inner life, their forms of expression become more complex.
The public, regardless of its social origin, likes, above all, that which is easily accessible.
The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.
The spirit of the age is not synonymous with what the public likes.
Tradition remains alive only when we struggle with it.
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