Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
Interpretation
We should all familiarize ourselves with poetry to enrich our understanding of the world and language.
Joseph Brodsky emphasizes the importance of poetry in our lives, suggesting that knowing a poet's work intimately can offer guidance in navigating our experiences and help us appreciate the nuances of language. Poetry serves not only as an artistic expression but also as a tool to measure the complexity and beauty of words in our everyday lives.
In practice
In a speech about education, one could say, 'As Joseph Brodsky stated, every individual ought to know at least one poet, emphasizing the role of poetry in our learning journey.'
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
Don Quixote β I read that every year, as some do the Bible.
To whom do I give my new elegant little book? Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?
There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
I think often people don't realize the great diversity of Southern writing because in their minds, if you're not from the South, it can seem regional and small, and of course that's not the case at all when you start to read the work.
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