Quotes by Lucien Goldmann

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The writer does not reflect the collective consciousness (in an immediate and mechanical sense) but, on the contrary, pushes to a very advanced degree of coherence the structures that this consciousness has elaborated in a relatively rudimentary way...

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The more the work is the expression of a genius thinker or writer, the better it is understood by itself, without the need for the historian to have recourse to the biography or the intentions of the creator. The strongest personality is that which best identifies itself with the life of the spirit, that is, with the essential forces of social consciousness in its active and creative nature.

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Literary creation has, among other things, the function of helping the human group to become aware of its problems and aspirations.

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True spiritual values ​​do not detach themselves from economic and social reality, but rest on this reality, trying to introduce into it the maximum of solidarity and human community... but the statement that economic and social factors have an influence on literary creation is not a dogma , but a hypothesis, valid only to the extent that it is confirmed by the facts.

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Art for art's sake - art with a tendency... It is not true that art resides in a content-independent form or that it would lose its rigor and purity through too close proximity to real life and social struggles, but, it is not nor is it true that we could appreciate the value of a literary work by its content in the name of certain doctrines or certain conceptual norms. The artist does not copy reality or teach truths. He creates beings and things that constitute a more or less vast and unified universe...