Quotes by Nichita Stănescu

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The world of a poem is often truer than the very convention of the world seen through the senses.

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The role of literature is as important as the role of science. Literature (and here we obviously mean only major, valuable literature) represents human specificity to the highest degree, it stimulates sensitivity and educates, through the force of the particular example, the general noble and sublime side of feelings as an act of consciousness.

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The truth of art is shown to be more concrete than the truth of nature.

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Art seems to us to be the fullest and most enduring part of humanity...

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There are few writers who manage to transcend their era. But I don't know any really talented writer or artist who doesn't have the era in which he lives as an active reference system in his work.

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The historical consciousness of the man of art is expressed through the reevaluation of the human general in a given era...

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We can talk about the appearance of the human general in the work of art only when he is fixed in a precise historical time...

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There is no timeless seminal work. The human general does not gain relief except filtered through a historical epoch...

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If the ultimate meaning is not also that of adding your life to your country, ennobling yourself by its light and adding greatness to it by your own existence, then you, who find occasion to be through writing, let yourself written.

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Arise and enlighten in word / the feelings of your country so that your son can tell you / and you can call it / your home.

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The reader is an alter ego, he is the one for whom I write. I write the lyrics in solitude. He also reads them to me like this: in solitude.

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Speech is the pinnacle of life experience. Learned or spontaneous, speech, like the genes in the cell, reproduces the history of the world.

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The poem is a semantic tension towards a word that does not exist, that he did not find. The poet creates the semantics of a word that does not exist.

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Aesthetics is not an independent field, but is an integral part of morality.

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Aesthetics is the peak expression of consciousness.

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The role of art is not primarily to express ideas, but to express the tension of ideas. But in order to express the tension of an idea, a general idea must always hover in the background of the artwork.

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Poetry is not only art; it is life itself, the very soul of life. It expresses itself primarily through art, but not only through art. Understanding poetry only as art impoverishes the notion of poetry. It is not a way of existence, as is sometimes claimed, but a fundamental component of existence... Without poetry man would not be distinguished from nothingness.