Joseph Brodsky Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• Bad literature is a form of treason.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Literature, Form, Treason

• If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Fall, Reading, Writing

  "Less Than One: Selected Essays".

• When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  California, Germany, Literature

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

• Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Organization, Literature, Irony

• In poetic thought, the role of the subconscious is played by euphony.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Poetry, Roles, Literature

• Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Writing, People, Etcetera

  Joseph Brodsky, Cynthia L. Haven (2002). “Joseph Brodsky: Conversations”, p.80, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Long, Literature, Affair

• Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Two, Special, Stories

• In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.

  Joseph Brodsky

  America, What Matters, Achievement

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• As a form of moral insurance, at least, literature is much more dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine. Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature - the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books - we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Philosophical, Reading, Book

• It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Responsibility, Decision, Faults

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

• Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Reading, Perspective, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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