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About this quote

What does it mean?
The author identifies two dominant figures in poetry and music representing different intellectual approaches.
In plain terms
Every art form has two great masters with distinct styles.
What can you take from it?
Great art often has contrasting towering figures.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • music history
  • literary analysis

Putting it to work

  • studying masters
  • comparing styles
  • teaching art history

Questions to consider

  • Who are the giants in your field?
  • How do contrasting styles enrich an art form?

Another view

Labeling artists as giants may overlook other important contributors.

More from Modest Mussorgsky

  1. My music must be an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its finest shades. That is, the sounds of human speech, as the external manifestations of thou…

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  2. I regard the people as a great being, inspired by a single idea. This is my problem. I strove to solve it in this opera.

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  3. Sounds and ideas are hanging in the air;I am devouring them and stuffing myself.A comment he wrote after viewing an exhibition of Viktor Hartmann's drawings an…

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