As quoted by Mishima's biographer, Henry Scott-Stokes in the documentary Yukio Mishima : Samurai Writer (1985)
“I want to make my own life a masterpiece.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…
Talks with Mussolini (1932), quoting earlier remarks <br class="br">As quoted in " Duce (1922-42)" in TIME magazine (2 August 1943) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,777927-4,00.html <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Variant: I shall make my own life a masterpiece.
“My poems are naughty, but my life is pure.”
Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.
Martial book Epigrammata
I, 4.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)
“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Life of Schiller.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
of not wanting to write a preface for his first volume of verse, The Rage for the Lost Penny (1940); “A Note on Poetry”, p. 47
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.”
Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet
"Some notes on my poetry" Collected Poems (1957)
Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker
“Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.”
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist
"Poem"
The Speed of Darkness (1968)
Context: Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ <br class="br"> A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday
Ryōkan (1758–1831) Japanese Buddhist monk
Variant translation:<br>Who says my poems are poems?<br>My poems are not poems.<br>After you know my poems are not poems,<br>Then we can begin to discuss poetry! <br class="br"> "Zen Poetics of Ryokan" in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry (Summer 2006) http://www.hermitary.com/articles/ryokan_poetics.html <br class="br">Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)
