#liter

The decline of sustained close reading of Eliot is also related, ironically, to the emergence of historical scholarship regarding sources and allusions. The major figure here is Grover Smith, who in the midfifties published an encyclopedic study of Eliot's sources. 3 The mere existence of Smith's scholarly tome changed the shape of close readings of Eliot. The poet's allusions and sources moved to the foreground of concern, and although most readers of Eliot's poetry and plays benefited from Smith's work, others found themselves frustrated by the weight of the intellectual backgrounds. ↗

— Jewel Spears Brooker

#change

Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader. ↗

— Georges Bataille

#literature #reader #rebellion #writers #writing

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#literature #truth #beauty

My soul is in the sky. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#literature #wisdom #dreams

Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind. ↗

— John Green

#literature #past #present #tense #time

...He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#haunting #literature #death

How curious it was, [...], that we humans had taken millions of year to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope. ↗

— Alan Bradley

#philosophical #death

Is this your first case?' This from the ugliest person Winter had ever seen. His face resembled five pounds of meat loaf molded by an arthritic potter. ↗

— Åke Edwardson

#scandinavian-literature #death

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil! Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business. ↗

— Aristophanes

#feminism #gender-roles #greek-literature #pacifism #war

Since the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, and a host of others have shown that this religious dimension can be experienced and communicated apart from any religious context. But that is no reason for closing my heart to Job's cry, or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. I do not read them as mere literature; rather, I read Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my being, too. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#religious #communication