“Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.”

"The Rise of James Fenton," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/efenton.htm published in The Dark Horse (Autumn 1999 and Summer 2000) <br class="br">Essays

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones." by Dana Gioia?

Dana Gioia photo

Dana Gioia80

American writer 1950

Related quotes

“Wherever it has had free play in the ancient world or in the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a thirst for empire, and a readiness for aggressive war, has always marked it.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

On democracy. Quarterly Review, 115, 1864, p. 239
1860s

“It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,—the old with a slightly new turn.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Chapter XI: Attention http://books.google.com/books?id=U6ETAAAAYAAJ&q=%22It+is+an+odd+circumstance+that+neither+the+old+nor+the+new+by+itself+is+interesting+the+absolutely+old+is+insipid+the+absolutely+new+makes+no+appeal+at+all+The+old+in+the+new+is+what+claims+the+attention+the+old+with+a+slightly+new+turn%22&pg=PA108#v=onepage <br class="br">1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

“The old Dances of Death supplied what fails so much in our modern life—an artistic representation appealing to all classes of at least one experience common to the whole of humanity.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 715, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring — as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold."”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

The Greek Anthology (p. 59)
Classics Revisited (1968)

“Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 12

“The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

“Shakespeare realised the thirteenth-century woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

“I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Related topics