“I believe that only poetry counts… A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”

— Francois Mauriac

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Francois Mauriac 38

French author 1885–1970

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“It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great – the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.”

F. R. Leavis book The Great Tradition

The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948) p. 2

“One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète.
Letter 4: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_4
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Complete Prose Works (1892), III. Notes Left Over 3. Ventures, on an Old Theme, p.324 http://books.google.com/books?id=UJA1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA324
Context: If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere — probably more than the rest of the world combined.
Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.

“I thought that while Gurudeva Rabindranath was the greatest poet of modem times, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyaya could rub shoulders with any great novelist the world had known.”

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (1894–1950) Indian author in Bengali

Sita Ram Goel, How I became a Hindu, Chapter 8

“I believe in one God, the first and great cause of all goodness.”

Daniel Morgan (1736–1802) American pioneer, soldier and politician

Letter to a Quaker (1798)
Context: I believe in one God, the first and great cause of all goodness. I also believe in Jesus Christ the redeemer of the world. I also believe in the Holy gost the comforter— here perhaps we may Differ a little as I believe Jesus Christ was from eternity and a part of the godhead — was Detached by the Father to Do a certain piece of service whioh was to take on Human Nature, which Human Nature was to suffer Death for the redemption of Mankind and when that service was compleatly fulfilled that he returned to and was consolidated with the Godhead. I further believe that all that are saved must be saved through the merits of Christ. I believe the Holy gost to be a part of the Divinity of the Father & son coequal with both is left here to comfort all that Hunger & thirst after righteousness a spark of which inhabit the breast of mankind as a monitor. These are apart of my ideas on the subject of religion.

“Great novelists are philosopher novelists — that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry ﬁrst, ﬁnds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Paris Review interview (1958)

“Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 672

“Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

This may have arisen as a paraphrase of statements found in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), "An Absurd Reasoning", or one found in The Novelist as Philosopher: Studies in French Fiction 1935-1960 (1962) edited by John Cruikshank, p. 218
Disputed

“No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Writing", p. 14
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“I believe that only poetry counts… A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”

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Francois Mauriac 38

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