Salvatore Quasimodo Quotes

• At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Age, Sound, Nuclear

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• Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Inspirational, Believe, Poetry

  Speech in New York, 13 May 1960, in New York Times 14 May 1960, p. 47

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• As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Order, Break Through, Circles

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• The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Believe, Hero, Doe

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• The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Culture, Politician, Poet

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• After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Religious, Principles, Moral

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• The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Character, Men, Stories

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• War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Country, War, Men

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• Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Shining, Example, Resistance

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• We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Solitude, Bitterness, Pardon

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• He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Epic, Men, Order

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• The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Order, Creative, Use

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• The poet's spoken discourse often depends on a mystique, on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Spiritual, Earth, Poetic

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• The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Distance, Looks, Pages

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• A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Tradition, Poet, Internationalism

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• Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Self, Redemption, Impossible

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• An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Mean, Men, Mind

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• Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Religious, Men, Expression

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• Religious power, which, as I have already said, frequently identifies itself with political power, has always been a protagonist of this bitter struggle, even when it seemingly was neutral.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Religious, Struggle, Political

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• From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Dark, Night, Yield

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• Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Movement, Firsts, Poetic

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• In opposition to this detachment, he finds an image of man which contains within itself man's dreams, man's illness, man's redemption from the misery of poverty - poverty which can no longer be for him a sign of the acceptance of life.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Dream, Acceptance, Men

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• My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Men, People, Waiting

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• Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Real, Heart, Men

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