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About this quote

What does it mean?
Romantic declarations and visions are natural parts of elevating something to a divine status.
In plain terms
Romantic speech is natural when making something seem divine.
What can you take from it?
Exaggerated praise fits attempts to elevate something.

Where it applies

  • critiquing romance
  • writing poetry
  • analyzing rhetoric

Putting it to work

  • critique rhetoric
  • write clearly
  • avoid mythmaking

Questions to consider

  • When does praise become myth?
  • How does language elevate reality?

Another view

It reduces genuine religious or poetic experience to mere style.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. He might take habit, whether from wave or phrase, Or power of the wave, or deepened speech, Or a leaner being, moving in on him, Of greater aptitude and appreh…

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  2. Apotheosis is not The origin of the major man. He comes, Compact in invincible foils, from reason, Lighted at midnight by the studious eye, Swaddled in revery,…

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  3. Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis, Incipit and a form to speak the word And every latent double in the word, Beau linguist.

    Permalink to quote #112

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