“When the poet said that for him poetry was not a purpose, but a passion, he was also expressing the feelings of the true scientist to his own field.”

—  Varadaraja V. Raman

THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE AND LITERATURE’’
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

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 "When the poet said that for him poetry was not a purpose, but a passion, he was also expressing the feelings of the tru…" by Varadaraja V. Raman?
Varadaraja V. Raman photo
Varadaraja V. Raman 23
American physicist 1932

Related quotes

Lucretius photo

“For every one feels to what purpose he can use his own powers. Before the horns of a calf appear and sprout from his forehead, he butts with them when angry, and pushes passionately.”
Sentit enim vis quisque suas quoad possit abuti. cornua nata prius vitulo quam frontibus extent, illis iratus petit atque infestus inurget.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book V, lines 1033–1035 (tr. Bailey)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Subramanya Bharathi photo

“He who writes poetry is not a poet. He whose poetry has become his life, and who has made his life his poetry — it is he who is a poet.”

Subramanya Bharathi (1882–1921) Tamil poet

English translation originally from "Subramaniya Bharathi" at Tamilnation.org, also quoted in "Colliding worlds of tradition and revolution" in The Hindu (13 December 2009) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/colliding-worlds-of-tradition-and-revolution/article662079.ece

Czeslaw Milosz photo

“Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-lecture-en.html (8 December 1980)

Peter Ackroyd photo

“No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.”

Peter Ackroyd (1949) English author

Chatterton (London: Abacus, [1987] 1991), ch. 10, p. 151.

Allen Ginsberg photo

“Scientist alone is true poet.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet
Tom Stoppard photo

“He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

Dana Gioia photo

“What does an instinctively popular poet do in contemporary America, where serious poetry is no longer a popular art? The public whose values and sensibility he celebrates is unaware of his existence. Indeed, even if they were aware of his poetry, they would feel no need to approach it. Cut off from his proper audience, this poet feels little sympathy with the specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry either as a highly sophisticated verbal game or secular religion. His sensibility shows little similarity to theirs except for the common interest in poetry. And so the popular poet usually leads a marginal existence in literary life. His fellow poets look on him as an anomaly or an anachronism. Reviewers find him eminently unnewsworthy. Publishers see little prestige attached to printing his work. Critics, who have been trained to celebrate complexity, consider him an amiable simpleton.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Anonymity of the Regional Poet: Ted Kooser" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ekooser.htm, from Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992)
Essays

“A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

Foreword
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.
Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true. Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside. His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience.

Jean de La Bruyère photo

“Menippus is a bird decked in various feathers which are not his. He neither says nor feels anything, but repeats the feelings and sayings of others; it is so natural for him to make use of other people’s minds that he is the first deceived by it, and often believes he speaks his own mind or expresses his own thoughts when he is but the echo of some man he just parted with.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Ménippe est l'oiseau paré de divers plumages qui ne sont pas à lui. Il ne parle pas, il ne sent pas; il répète des sentiments et des discours, se sert même si naturellement de l'esprit des autres qu'il y est le premier trompé, et qu'il croit souvent dire son goût ou expliquer sa pensée, lorsqu'il n'est que l'écho de quelqu'un qu'il vient de quitter.
Aphorism 40
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel

W. H. Auden photo

“To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"American Poetry", p. 367
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Related topics