Tag: literature

A major mistake of these artists who want to create works of “national importance” is that, by focusing on a supposedly comprehensive theme, they forget that, in order for it to be truly comprehensive, the best test is to ensure its relevance on a personal level. Failing to realize this, they fall into an artificiality that is the natural result when one does not understand the real importance of things. The work, therefore, conceived to be comprehensive, ends up detached from reality—or, more simply, irrelevant.

It is incredible to see how poetry, from the middle of the last century onwards, has become practically unreadable. Unreadable and bad, with very few exceptions that seem to belong to another time. It is no use, not even with the utmost goodwill can the problem be overcome: contemporary poetry, at best, looks interesting, it deceives when endowed with an obscurity that seems to hold some treasure. In short, the effort to understand it never pays off. It is a shame.

Even though they border on the unreal and inconceivable, mystical texts are undoubtedly more enjoyable reading than the petty literature of the banal. Because the former, like legends and fantastic literature, has a much more stimulating suggestive content than this commonplace realism, which makes reading seem like a tremendous waste of time. If it is to immerse oneself in letters, let it be so that the mind expands, and not so that it becomes trapped in what requires neither letters nor imagination.

The best literature is always that which is most connected to direct experience, on which the author’s individuality rests. No matter how much or how well he idealizes, his spirit will be most intense when describing not what he imagines, but what he knows. This is why, in many cases, it is the biography that supports the author.