“The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.”

—  Wallace Stevens

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value
Context: The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have.

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Wallace Stevens278
American poet 1879–1955

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