#comprehensible

... While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness. ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better. ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ... ↗

— Andrew Elfenbein

#incomprehensible #poetry #romantic-poets #romantic

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. ↗

— Jane Austen

#ever #incomprehensible #man #marriage #offer

Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#beauty #become #exposes #face #features

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#comprehensible #incomprehensible #most #thing #world

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis. ↗

— Jacques Ellul

#beyond #both #bounds #chosen #comes

Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word.' ↗

— Stan Brakhage

#before #beginning #colour #endless #gradations

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate. ↗

— David Brooks

#causes #comprehensible #confront #cult #death

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#culture #does #infinity #make #want

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness. ↗

— Carl Jung

#cope #cure #darkness #definite #does

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. ↗

— John Maynard Keynes

#incompetent #incomprehensible #indifferent #into