#on literature

[motifcollector]

THE LESSON OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS, OF GREEK TRAGEDY, AND ULTIMATELY, OF ALL RELIGIONS, IS THAT THERE IS AN INSTINCTIVE TENDENCY TOWARDS DIVINE INTOXICATION WHICH THE RATIONAL WORLD OF CALCULATION CANNOT BEAR.* IF YOURE LISTENING!! IF YOU EVEN CARE!!!!

*Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil

#literature #on literature #on love #georges bataille #wuthering heights

[derangedrhythms]

To create pleasure and pain at once is the novelist’s aim. 

Anne Carson, from ‘Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay’

#anne carson #eros the bittersweet #other writing #on literature

[unionize-aromantically]

not to join the discourse but there are a million opinions on what "the point of fiction" is. Like haven't you heard of literature history before? They change their opinion on that all the time in there. E.g. "the point of fiction is to discuss societal injustice" (by pointing it out), "the point of fiction is to evoke strong feelings" (with focus on the individual), etc.

#ink.post #on fiction #on literature #on literary art #on art

[feral-ballad]

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

#jeanette winterson #why be happy when you could be normal #on poetry #on literature #on language #memoir #excerpts #writings #literature #prose #fragments #selections #words #quotes #lit #english literature #prose collection

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations [...] Prose should be a direct intimacy between strangers with no appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to fears unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone."

~ Henry Green

#henry green #quotes #lit quotes #literature #literature quotes #literary quotes #literary quotations #quotations #on writing #writing quotes #english literature #british literature #english author #british author #prose #on literature

[megairea]

Octavio Paz, as quoted in Pedro Salinas’ To Live In Pronouns: Selected Poems

#octavio paz #on literature #literature

[poetfromthevoid]

Literature is not a hobby nor an escape, it’s a way, perhaps the most complete and complex, of seeing the human condition.

Ernesto Sabato.

#ernesto sabato #favorite quotes #literature #on literature #human condition #bookworm #argentina

[bones-ivy-breath]

The earlier world view of the poet as "the masculine chief of state in charge of dispensing universal spiritual truths" (Diane Middlebrook, The World Into Words) has eroded since World War II, as have earlier notions about the existence of universal truths themselves. Freed by that cataclysm from their clichéd roles as goddesses of the hearth and bedroom, women began to write openly out of their own experiences. Before there was a Women's Movement, the underground river was already flowing, carrying such diverse cargoes as the poems of Bogan, Levertov, Rukeyser, Swenson, Plath, Rich, and Sexton.

How It Was: Maxine Kumin on Anne Sexton, from Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems

#anne sexton #quote #maxine kumin #literature #dark academia #aesthetic #light academia #how it was #anne sexton: the complete poems #classic academia #on writing #feminism #modern literature #on poetry #on literature

[seawilde]

[ — Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present by Gary Taylor ]

growing up is realizing you will always be a hamlet kinnie. where your teenage self found emo vibes they could relate to, you'll just simply start to find nuances and an inability to take action that resonates with your being.

#hamlet #shakespeare #on literature #coleridge

[faeriefully]

Literature is not just words, neither is it just ideas. It is a formal construct mirroring all of life, reporting it, questioning it.

— Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

#quotes #words #on literature #literature #mary oliver #mine

[motifcollector]

Goodreads reviews are so often terrible but one thing that really gets me is when people suggest that anything dealing with abuse and/or sexual violence is intended to be edgy or provocative or unusually dark. Of course these things are very traumatic but they're also incredibly common! Many people seem to not realize this, which is genuinely mind boggling to me. It seems logical that something that is 1) a very common experience and 2) typically has a big impact on someone's life would appear in fiction a lot. People will be like "wow this story collection was so bleak, all these women were abused or had unhealthy relationships w men" etc. That's literally life! It is bleak, but it is reality—the author isn't presenting an artificially pessimistic view of the world. I don't know, I don't think I'm articulating this well, but these reviews perpetuate the idea that abuse is a rarity and speaking about it is abnormal. Not good imo

#peyton.txt #on literature

[derangedrhythms]

All literature is scarry. It celebrates the wound and repeats the lesion.

Hélène Cixous, from 'Stigmata: Escaping Texts', tr. Eric Prenowitz

#hélène cixous #stigmata #other writing #on literature

[stargir1z]

"The demise of literary theory has by now confirmed the transition to a third regime of relevance, where increasingly literature is not recognized for its social and political weight, nor indeed for some presumed aesthetic uniqueness, but is rather evaluated in a more low-key regime of relevance for what it can provide in terms of practically useful experience or entertainment or therapy." Galin Tihanov

#my uploads #on consumerism #on literary theory #on literature #on reading #galin tihanov

[poemwithoutahero]

— AKHTAR HUSAIN RAIPURI (from literature and life)

#* #akhtar husain raipuri #literature #on literature #if you're interested in knowing more about the subcontinent's progressive writer's movement—add this piece! #it's credited for essentially kickstarting it and contains a lot of the themes those writers focused on #(inspired by me ordering a copy of ismat chughtai's short stories for my birthday ❣)

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"Nowadays, when critics make sure that the novelist understands the crucial importance of creating characters with whom the reader can sympathize and identify, approve of and like, when the book-buying public insists upon plots in which obstacles are overcome and hardships prove instructive, in which goodness and kindness are recognized and rewarded -- given these fashions and prevailing pressures, few novelists would have the nerve to author a book as unsparing (and for that reason, as exalting) as Cousin Bette. Reading Balzac's masterpiece reminds us of the reasons why we need great literature: for aesthetic pleasure and enjoyment, for beauty and truth, for the opportunity to enter the mind of another, for information about the temporal and the eternal. So much of what Balzac tells us has by now become much more difficult, indeed practically impossible (or impermissible) for us to admit to ourselves, or to say: the fact that the poor and ugly might envy the poor and the rich, that our craving for sex and money is so anarchic that it can defeat, with hardly a struggle, our better instincts and good judgement. Balzac, who know about all these things (firsthand, as it were), continues to remind us, in novels such as Cousin Bette, what we humans are capable of -- which is to say, what we are."

Francine Prose, introduction to Cousin Bette, Modern Library Edition (2002)

#francine prose #quotes #literature quotes #quotes on literature #on literature #book quotes #on writing #writing quotes #cousin bette #honoré de balzac #essays #e #french literature

[moonshinemagpie]

Me: why would I write stories when wars are going on :(

Umberto Eco: so the thing about people who kill is that they didn't get to read enough books

#umberto eco #on literature #this is not verbatim what he says but it is literally what he means and boy howdy