The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value
Context: What the poet has in mind... is that poetic value is an intrinsic value. It is not the value of knowledge. It is not the value of faith. It is the value of imagination. The poet tries to exemplify it, in part as I have tried to exemplify it here, by identifying it with an imaginative activity that diffuses itself throughout our lives.
“All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.”
"The Poet & The City", p. 84
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
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W. H. Auden 122
Anglo-American poet 1907–1973Related quotes
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream
“Deceiving himself well is the first quality of the statesman.”
Ibid., p. 241
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Saber iludir-se bem é a primeira qualidade do estadista.
Letter to R. C. Trevelyan , September 7, 1932
Other Quotes
“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 1 : The Courage to Create, p. 22
“Those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 514.