“None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.”

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 11

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 "None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of…" by Edith Hamilton?
Edith Hamilton photo
Edith Hamilton 26
American teacher and writer 1867–1963

Related quotes

Whittaker Chambers photo
Edith Wharton photo

“There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer
Dan Brown photo

“Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.”

Source: Angels & Demons

Jean Cocteau photo

“The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Arthur Miller photo

“Tragedy enlightens — and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens — and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Notebook E (1945) edited by Edmund Wilson
Quoted, Notebooks

Robert Henryson photo

“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

Alan Lightman photo

Related topics