“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.”
The Thief's Journal (1949)
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Jean Genet 32
French novelist, playwright, poet and political activist 1910–1986Related quotes
“That diamond encrusted goat's skull is the height of good taste!”
Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)
“Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility.”
Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility
Context: Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory...
Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)
Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
Context: Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.
Re: Filk, puns, and other time wasting. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4bda6a98e5cf0bce (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
“To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.”
Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)
“"Taste is relative" is the excuse adopted by those eras that have bad taste.”
Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)
