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.
A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
It is a confession that we do not have such a prodigious head as is required to answer the question what is happening, that we cannot get on top of what is happening, that we are stuck in the middle of it, in medias res, inter-esse, amazing and bewildered. We cannot soar over what is happening with philosophy's eagle-wings. What's happening has clipped our wings.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
A Jesus who never wept could never wipe away my tears.
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
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