bs2Mar 24, 2022
> We are asked to love or to hate such and such a country and such and such a people. But some of us feel too strongly our common humanity to make such a choice. Those who really love the #Russian people, in gratitude for what they have never ceased to be — that world leaven which #Tolstoy and #Gorky speak of — do not wish for them success in #PowerPolitics, but rather want to spare them, after the ordeals of the past, a new and even more terrible #bloodletting.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/05/albert-camus-neither-victims-nor-executioners/
#Camus
Neither Victims Nor Executioners: Albert Camus on the Antidote to Violence

“If he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward.”

The Marginalian
Show threadbs2
> What if, despite two or three world wars, despite the sacrifice of several generations and a whole system of values, our grandchildren — supposing they survive — find themselves no closer to a world society? It may well be that the survivors of such an experience will be too weak to understand their own sufferings.
#Albert Camus #NeitherVictimsNorExecutioners ...
After #WW2 he foresaw that we could end up not knowing why we feel so ForsaKeneD...
Mar 24, 2022 at 12:20pmWeb
Show threadbs2Feb 6, 2023
> ... there is no reason why some of us should not take on the job of keeping alive through the apocalyptic histor­ical vista that stretches before us, a modest thoughtfulness which, without pretending to solve everything, will constantly be prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life.
#AlbertCamus on #ModestThoughtfulness #HumanMeaning #EveryDayLife quotoed by #MariaPopova #TheMarginalian
Show threadbs2Feb 6, 2023
> To talk of despair is to conquer it. Despairing literature is a contradiction in terms.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/albert-camus-the-rebel#fn78
#TheRebel #LiteratureOfDespair #DespairingLiterature
The Rebel

Albert Camus The Rebel 1951

The Anarchist Library
Show threadbs2Feb 6, 2023

Some songs by the Texas Tornados make me thing of this Camus footnote on Art and Despair:
> Just lost my care, 'bout to lose my wife. But I've got to go on with my life... Ta Bueno Compadre
...
Sometimes la vida you win or lose. Got to be careful what road you choose..

The song ends up sounding like Camus on war and murder and having to make a choice...

Show threadbs2Mar 20, 2023
> ... though the enacted subject is a sad one, the act of performing it is joyous because it leads the poet to true equivalents of his feeling. In art a true equivalence (no matter of what) is always a joyous capture.
#JohnCiardi in #HowDoesAPoemMean made me think of #Camus in #TheRebel on #DespairingLiterature, that there can not be a #LiteratureOfDespair, We read for #JoyousCapture, I guess. #Poetry #Poem #LitCrit
Show threadSo many dynamosMar 20, 2023
@bsmall2 I have that very book on top of a stack of #poetry books here
Show threadbs2Mar 20, 2023
@Zerofactorial I have to confess i only read the first couple pages of _How Does a Poem Mean_ but I've read John Ciardi's "Robert Frost: The Way of the Poem" a few times. Encountering that essay in an old anthology, _Readings For Rhetoric_ is what got me interested in Ciardi. _How Does a Poem Mean_ reminds me of I.A. Richards"s "How does a poem know when it is finished?"(In _Poetries and Sciences_) Recent "AI" BS has me reading LitCrit from the 1920s and 50s. What poetry are you reading?
Show threadSo many dynamosMar 20, 2023
@bsmall2 I read and write #poetry pretty widely. Recently: https://marokomag.com/post/for-the-world-s-pretty-eyes https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159602/the-artist-63d98c7c811b0 poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram
For the World's Pretty Eyes & Other Poems

By Renaud Dossavi

Márọkọ́
Show threadbs2Mar 22, 2023
@Zerofactorial Wow! You are a real poet! I started glancing through Ciardi's book. It's great the way it lets me focus on the poems. Warren and Brooks's(?) _Understanding Poetry_ can feel too wordy with the explanations, but I'm grateful to their book for getting me into Robinson Jeffers and other poets I might not have encountered. I.A. Richards's work with poetry in his writings (Practical Criticism and his quotes in other work) is what got me attending to some poems, still not enough though.
Show threadSo many dynamosMar 22, 2023
@bsmall2 I've been at it for a while, but have only gotten published on a regular basis the last few years. I don't have an MFA or anything like that either.
Show threadbs2Mar 23, 2023
@Zerofactorial It took me a day or two to guess what an MFA is. You'll do fine without one, I'm guessing that Yeats and Keats and Elinor Wylie and Mary Oliver got along fine without one too. I couldn't get into poetry till Richards convinced me it was practice with Choice, 'the unacknowledged legislation of the world" and it got tangled up with Murray Bookchin's _Ecology of Freedom_, Now I can get a lot more from _Readings for Literature_'s(1948!) poems and poems mentioned in various books.