It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that creating beauty (paradiso) is challenging in a world that insists on focusing on negativity and destruction (apocalypse).
Ezra Pound's quote reflects the struggle of producing uplifting or beautiful work when faced with overwhelming negativity and societal pressures that advocate for darker themes. It highlights the tension between the desire to create something positive and the external influences that push one towards despair or apocalyptic narratives.
In practice
During a speech about artistic expression, one could use this quote to illustrate the challenges faced by artists.
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
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.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism
The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please.
The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.
Humanity needs dreams to be able to survive the miseries of daily existence, even if only for an instant.
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?
This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.
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