Carolina QuotesA few weeks ago I read, in Sacheverell Sitwell, two impressive sentences: “It is my belief that I have informed myself of nearly all works of art in the known world.... I have heard most of the music of the world, and seen nearly all the paintings.” It was hard for me to believe these sentences, but I wanted Sitwell to be able to say them, liked him for having said them — I believed.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 71
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- p. 71
Cite this record
“A few weeks ago I read, in Sacheverell Sitwell, two impressi…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-688F124A88. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/688f124a88
More from Randall Jarrell
Gertrude knew better than this, of course, but we all know better than we know better, or act as if we did.
...Stevens does not think of inspiration (or whatever you want to call it) as a condition of composition. He too is waiting for the spark from heaven to fall — poets have no choice about this — but he waits writing; and this — other things being equal, when it’s possible, if it’s possible — is the best way for a poet to wait.
The poet needs to be deluded about his poems — for who can be sure that it is delusion? In his strongest hours the public hardly exists for the writer; he does what he ought to do, has to do, and if afterwards some Public wishes to come and crown him with laurel crowns, well, let it! if critics wish to tell people all that he isn’t, well, let them — he knows what he is. But at night when he can’t get to sleep it seems to him that it is what he is, his own particular personal quality, that he is being disliked for. It is this that the future will like him for, if it likes him for anything; but will it like him for anything? The poet’s hope is in posterity, but it is a pale hope; and now that posterity itself has become a pale hope...