
“A poet's first contract is with truth.”
State of the Art (2000)
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>So poisonousAre the ravishments of truth, so fatal to
The truth itself, the first idea becomes
The hermit in a poet’s metaphors,Who comes and goes and comes and goes all day.</p
“A poet's first contract is with truth.”
State of the Art (2000)
“All great poets become naturally, fatally, critics.”
Tous les grands poètes deviennent naturellement, fatalement, critiques.
XIV: "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner_et_Tannh%C3%A4user_%C3%A0_Paris_%28L%E2%80%99Art_romantique%29
L'art romantique (1869)
Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
“It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die, so that the country may live.”
Original French: Je prononce à regret cette fatale vérité... mais Louis doit mourir, parce qu'il faut que la patrie vive.
Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/journal_debats/an/1792/convention_1792_12_03.htm on the judgment of Louis XVI (3 December 1792)
“Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.”
Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
Context: Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.