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Joseph Brodsky Quotes about Art

All Joseph Brodsky Quotes Art quotes Boredom Evil Failing Language Literature Perspective Poetry Reading Writing
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For

By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.

Joseph Brodsky
Art, Animal, Goal
Joseph Brodsky's opening remarks as United States Poet Laureate, October 1991.

Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.

Joseph Brodsky
Art, Book, Hero

Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations.

Joseph Brodsky
Art, Reactions, Organisms

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

Joseph Brodsky
Art, Poetry, Way
Joseph Brodsky (2011). “On Grief And Reason: Essays”, p.106, Penguin UK

In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

Joseph Brodsky
Art, Russia, Odds
"Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

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