Stephen Spender cytaty
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Sir Stephen Harold Spender – angielski poeta i prozaik oraz tłumacz literatury hiszpańskiej.

W młodości był związany z grupą W. H. Audena. Jako antyfaszysta brał udział w hiszpańskiej wojnie domowej . Z tego okresu pochodzi jego zbiór wierszy The Still Centre . Był redaktorem czasopism literackich: "Horizon" oraz "Encounter" .

Początkowo w swojej twórczości propagował radykalne, lewicujące poglądy. W późnejszym okresie nadał swojej liryce ton indywidualistyczny, kontemplacyjny .

Był autorem autobiografii World within World oraz szkiców krytyczno-literackich. Polski przekład jego utworów w antologiach Czas niepokoju oraz Poeci języka angielskiego . Wikipedia  

✵ 28. Luty 1909 – 16. Lipiec 1995
Stephen Spender: 77   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Stephen Spender cytaty

„Idąc w górę przez przestrzeń, nabrzmiałym swym Teraz
O, istota każdej zjawiskowej chwili,
Idąc od niepojętego początku
Do niepojętego końca –
w Czasie”

Źródło: Czas w naszym czasie, „Życie Literackie” nr 34, 25 sierpnia 1957, s. 5 http://mbc.malopolska.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=14877

Stephen Spender: Cytaty po angielsku

“History has tongues
Has angels has guns — has saved has praised —
Today proclaims
Achievements of her exiles long returned”

"Exiles From Their Land, History Their Domicile"
The Still Centre (1939)
Kontekst: History has tongues
Has angels has guns — has saved has praised —
Today proclaims
Achievements of her exiles long returned
Now no more rootless, for whom her printed page
Glazes their bruised waste years in one
Balancing present sky.

“Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”

"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)
Kontekst: Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?

“I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written.”

Response to a would be biographer in 1980, as quoted in "When Stephen met Sylvia" in The Guardian (24 April 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1201328,00.html
Kontekst: I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.

“Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds the torn hair round their paleness.”

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum" in Modern British Poetry (1962) edited by Louis Untermeyer (1962) variant : Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.
Ruins and Visions (1942)

“There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife.”

Lecture at Brooklyn College, as quoted in The New York Times (20 November 1984)

“History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.”

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Times (1993) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 247

“I simply had to get there.”

Remark in 1980, after riding in a taxi for 287 miles, after his plane was grounded because of bad weather, to attend a dinner date with Jacqueline Onassis; as quoted in "Stephen Spender, Toady: Was there any substance to his politics and art?" by Stephen Metcalf at Slate.com (7 February 2005) http://www.slate.com/id/2113164/

“After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.”

"The Express" (l. 1–3) in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1988) edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair