Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go. Laura Riding More Quotes by Laura Riding More Quotes From Laura Riding The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service. Laura Riding military writing son All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents. Laura Riding literature writing may Shakespeare alternated between musical surrenders to social prestige and magnificent fits of poetic remorse. Laura Riding poetic fit musical Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual. Laura Riding practice writing mean To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth…but only a problem of art is solved in poetry. Laura Riding poet problem art Every thought sounds like a footfall, Till a thought like a boot kicks down the wall. Laura Riding wall hiking journey Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them. Laura Riding deceiving appearance enough We live on the circumference of a hollow circle. We draw the circumference, like spiders, out of ourselves: it is all criticism of criticism. Laura Riding spiders circles criticism Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.' A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers. Laura Riding names two ideas Euripides seems to have felt that the dignified perfection of Sophocles could be challenged only by novelty and irresponsibility. The religious conditions of the Dionysian festival kept him within certain bounds. But within the imposed limits Euripides was as profane as he dared to be, making melodrama of the divine realities which his predecessors accepted religiously, using the stage merely as a convenience for popularizing his own eccentric values. Laura Riding religious perfection reality Ideas are the old-age of art. Artists have to keep young; they must not think too much - thought is death, while art is life. Such was Emile's viewpoint. Laura Riding ideas art thinking Conversation succeeds conversation, Until there's nothing left to talk about Except truth, the perennial monologue, And no talker to dispute it but itself. Laura Riding disputes women succeed The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself. Laura Riding mind giving memories There can be no literary equivalent to truth. Laura Riding book The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition. Laura Riding differences play mean Metaphor is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight. Laura Riding expression mother sight The object of all religious activity is to mingle the human and the non-human, and the lower gods represent that which is cast back to the human from the non-human - human gods merely, practice-gods who embody the errors which man makes in first conceiving the non-human. Laura Riding errors religious men Anger is precious because it is an immediate, undeniable clue to what our minds (so much more cautious in rejection and resistance than our bodies) will not tolerate. Laura Riding rejection body mind I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it. Laura Riding understanding feelings two 'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. 'God' is the question 'Is there something more important than, something besides, man?' Laura Riding names character men
