“Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an esthetic credo which others before him scattered in the space of long pages. He was an enfant terrible.”

— Jorge Luis Borges , book Luna De Enfrente

"A Poem by Oscar Wilde" http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_wilde.html (1925) An essay on Wilde and his Ballad of Reading Gaol.

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 "Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an …" by Jorge Luis Borges?

Jorge Luis Borges 213

Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… 1899–1986

Related quotes

“It was not his to choose from what volume or on which page thereof he would read; accident, as it seemed, decided that; but the chance-opened page lay unblurred before him, and he saw it with a clarity denied to other men of his generation.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 23 : Economic Considerations of Piety

“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184

“Henryson's greatness is most plainly to be seen in the range of general principles and ideas which informs his poetry and which allows it to encompass tragedy and comedy alike. He is the most Shakespearian of the early Scottish poets.”

Robert Henryson (1425–1506) Scottish makar (poet)

John MacQueen, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography vol. 26, s. n. Henryson, Robert.
Criticism

“The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 23.

“The prose writer drags meaning along with a rope, the poet makes it stand out and hit you.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Speculations (Essays, 1924)

“See, this hidden brightness in which one contemplates everything that one desires according to the way of emptiness of spirit, this brightness is so great that the loving contemplative neither sees nor feels anything in his ground in which he rests except an incomprehensible light. And according to the simple bareness which encompasses all things, he finds and feels himself to be that very light by which he sees, and nothing else.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

“Neither in prose nor verse we aught can say,
But some one said it long before our day.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

LIX, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The William Saroyan Reader (1958)
Context: The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy — the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.

“Many great writers inspired me, of course, but inspiration is not the same as a direct influence. I was often stirred by the beauty of great prose, the passion and startling intensity of hard-won truths, which leapt from that creative fire. … For the writer, therefore the reader, fresh truth is exhilarating, even painful truth, as in Kafka or Céline. Isn’t that what good writing finally arrives at? The insights and epigrams of Alexander Pope weren’t clichés when he wrote them, any more than those resounding lines in Shakespeare. They only became dog-eared from overuse.”

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) American novelist

The Paris Review interview (1999)

“Half of me wants to be this difficult, rebellious enfant terrible who is pissing everyone off and doing whatever I want to do, and the other half of me is this Jewish kid from Chicago that just wants everyone to like him and hates conflict and hates yelling and wants everyone to get along, and be nice. That’s the part that’s very Chicago.”

Graham Moore (writer) (1981) screenwriter

As quoted in "How The Imitation Game Screenwriter Graham Moore Made It In Hollywood" by E. A. Hanks, at BuzzFeed (27 September 2013) http://www.buzzfeed.com/eahanks/benedict-cumberbatch-alan-turing-graham-moore#.utM8L9YvAB

“Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an esthetic credo which others before him scattered in the space of long pages. He was an enfant terrible.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jorge Luis Borges 213

Related quotes

Related topics