QuoteProject
It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.
Stephane Mallarme
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Poetry helps to clarify and enhance our understanding by emphasizing silence and contemplation.

This quote by Stephane Mallarme reflects the role of poetry as a medium that purifies our often chaotic and cluttered reality. By crafting episodes of silence around certain ideas and emotions, poetry allows us to pause, reflect, and gain deeper insights into our experiences, ultimately revealing the beauty and complexity of the world around us.

Themes

PoetrySilenceRealityReflectionArt

In practice

Example use cases

In a poetry reading, it would be fitting to quote Mallarme when discussing the transformative power of poetry.

More from Stephane Mallarme

As for me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because this self-lust has a delightful dying fall in my soul.
Stephane MallarmeRead
The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.
Stephane MallarmeRead
The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.
Stephane MallarmeRead
A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright, To exist again, it’s enough if I borrow from Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night.
Stephane MallarmeRead

Similar quotes

Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.
Coco ChanelRead
I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.
Marcel MarceauRead
Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to and I see another movie I want to make.
Steven SpielbergRead
The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.
Ted HughesRead
For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.
Gao XingjianRead
When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.
Roger PenroseRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.