Poetry and fiction have grieved for a century now over the loss of some vitality which they think they see in a past from which we are by now irrevocably alienated. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
Fiction's essential activity is to imagine how others feel, what a Saturday afternoon in an Italian town in the 2nd Century looked like. My ambition is solely to get some effect, as of light on stone in a forest on… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
I was thought to be retarded as a child, and all the evidence indicates that I was. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.” — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“The poet and poetess have always had a rough time of it in the Republic. It has ever been their endemic luck to starve,… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
Something of the previous state, however, survives every change. This is called in the language of cybernetics (which took it form the language of… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“I God, a very Gomorry on wheels! You lead the most exciting life I know of, and complain more about it than any two… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
It is worthwhile adding that the power of the poem to teach not only sensibilities and the subtle movements of the spirit but knowledge,… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
nothing now exists that is so valuable as whatever theoretically might replace it. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
