14 E. E. Cummings Quotes on Art

E. E. Cummings quotes on art

1. Writing...is an art; and artists...are human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is....

4. So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed-after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels-to call our 'lives,') let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and 'art' or 'the arts.' Let us not forget that every authentic 'work of art' is in and of itself alive and that, however 'the arts' may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as 'beauty.' This being so, our three ring circus is art-for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of 'beauty' is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is 'childish,' is idiotic.

6. My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. 'Would you hit a woman with a child?- No, I'd hit her with a brick.' Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

7. I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

8. Art is a mystery. A mystery is something immeasurable. In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn't matter a very good God damn...

9. Why do you paint? For exactly the same reason I breathe. That's not an answer. There isn't any answer. How long hasn't there been any answer? As long as I can remember. And how long have you written? As long as I can remember. I mean poetry. So do I.

10. Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. Easy? Of course-you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. I never met him. Who? Everybody. Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting? I am. Pardon me? I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational. Not all painting. No: housepainting is representational. And what does a housepainter represent? Ten dollars an hour. In other words, you don't want to be serious- It takes two to be serious.

49. completely dare be beautiful

51. poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality....poetry is being, not doing....if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities . . .

53. concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in half a GI uniform and ready to be hanged as a traitor by the only country which ever made even a pretense of fighting for freedom of speech Re Ezra Pound - poetry happens to be an art;and artists happen to be human beings.

54. An artist doesn't live in some geographical abstraction,superimposed on a part of this beautiful earth by the nonimagination of unanimals and dedicated to the proposition that massacre is a social virtue because murder is an individual vice. Nor does an artist live in some soi-disant world,nor does he live in some so-called universe,nor does he live in any number of 'worlds' or in any number of 'universes.' As for a few trifling delusions like the 'past' and 'present' and 'future' of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple of billion supermechanized submorons but they're much too small for one human being.

55. Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide;and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself - whoever himself may be - is immortal;and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.

81. all which isn't singing is mere talking : and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of(as mountains feel and lovers)singing is silence

87. my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world -unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die. Does this sound dismal? It isn't. It's the most wonderful life on earth. Or so I feel.