It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art's purpose is often commercial rather than for long-lasting appreciation.
In this quote, Ezra Pound criticizes the commercialized nature of art, suggesting that art is primarily created for the purpose of selling rather than for enduring beauty or lasting connection. He implies that the relentless pursuit of profit diminishes the quality and integrity of artistic expression, reducing it to mere commodities that lack depth, much like stale bread or dry paper.
Themes
ArtCommerceCreativityQualityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a discussion on the commercialization of art in modern society.
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
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.
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
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Stan LeeRead
Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.
Andre BretonRead
And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.
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There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.
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Abraham VergheseRead
I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.
Anais NinRead