It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers have a crucial role in society that corresponds to their writing skills.
Ezra Pound emphasizes that literature and writing are deeply connected to the social context in which they are created. He suggests that authors have an important responsibility to society that is directly linked to their talent and abilities, indicating that their work has practical implications beyond mere artistic expression.
Themes
LiteratureSocial FunctionWritersResponsibilityArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of artists in society, this quote can highlight the importance of literature.
More from Ezra Pound
All quotes →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.
Ezra PoundRead
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
Ezra PoundRead
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra PoundRead
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.
Ezra PoundRead
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
Ezra PoundRead
Similar quotes
All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
Ernest HemingwayRead
I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.
Kate DicamilloRead
When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.
William GoldingRead
People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.
J. K. RowlingRead
If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
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 been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead