It is enough for a poet to be the guilty conscience of his age.
Saint-John PerseRead
In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all 'poetic' in the proper sense of the word; and inasmuch as there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses that both poetry and scientific creation stem from the same fundamental human creativity.
Saint-John Perse highlights the intrinsic link between poetry and science, suggesting that both emerge from a similar creative source within the human mind. He argues that the processes of intellect and sensibility are interconnected, allowing poetry and scientific inquiry to coexist as expressions of human imagination and understanding.
Themes
CreativityPoetryScienceImaginationIntellect
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on interdisciplinary studies, one might say, 'As Saint-John Perse noted, both poetry and science share a deep-rooted connection in human creativity.'
More from Saint-John Perse
All quotes →Poetry allies itself with beauty - a supreme union - but never uses it as its ultimate goal or sole nourishment.
Saint-John PerseRead
The poet existed among the cave men; he will exist among men of the atomic age, for he is an inherent part of man. Even religions have been born from the need for poetry, which is a spiritual need, and it is through the grace of poetry that the divine spark lives forever in the human flint.
Saint-John PerseRead
Similar quotes
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.
Sharon OldsRead
I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
Duke EllingtonRead
I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.
David BowieRead
Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.
Charles BukowskiRead
In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
David Foster WallaceRead
Real music lovers are actually my favourite kind of people because they like to know, rather than just be told what to think.
PrinceRead