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" I have just finished my novel (rough draft). It is to be called 'Anacoluthon.' This will make the public think it is an historical romance. "
Louis MacNeice
Draft
Historical
Romance
Related Quotes:
" The poet is primarily a spokesman, making statements or incantations on behalf of himself or others - usually for both, for it is difficult to speak for oneself without speaking for others or to speak for others without speaking for oneself. "
Louis MacNeice
Without
Others
Poet
" My stepmother appeared when I was about 9. My brother was sent off to an institute in Scotland & my sister & I were sent to school. As my stepmother's ideas were then wholly Quaker, mixed with a naive & charming innocence & a little snobbery, it was one dotty epoch on top of another. I always remained terrified of my father. "
Louis MacNeice
Brother
School
Ideas
" The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm. "
Louis MacNeice
Laws
Individual
Rules
" Dublin was hardly worried by the war; her old preoccupations were still preoccupations. The intelligentsia continued their parties; their mutual malice was as effervescent as ever. "
Louis MacNeice
Mutual
Malice
Her
" Before I joined the BBC I was, like most of the intelligentsia, prejudiced not only against that institution but against broadcasting in general. "
Louis MacNeice
Most
Before
Against
" Though I do regard the Inquisition in general and the burning of Giordano Bruno in particular as blots on the history of the Roman Catholic Church, I am far from being actuated by hatred of that church, and in fact cannot imagine that European civilization would have developed or survived without it. "
Louis MacNeice
History
Hatred
Church
" Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically. "
Louis MacNeice
Poetry
Language
Race
" The teapot takes in water and gives out tea. So the human individual takes in anything you give him and promptly transforms it; he is ready to give you out again his own reactions - first, in thought and emotion, then in voice or action. "
Louis MacNeice
Voice
Water
Action
" The poet has no greater number of muscles than the ordinary conversationalist; he merely has more highly developed muscles and better coordination. And he practises his activity according to a stricter set of rules. "
Louis MacNeice
Number
Rules
More
" I am more proud of what distinguishes man from the animals than of what he has in common with them. "
Louis MacNeice
I Am
Proud
More
" The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises. Herein, poetry differs from the other arts. Everyone does not practise music or painting or even dancing, but everyone without exception puts together words poetically every day of his life. "
Louis MacNeice
Arts
Together
Music
" In writing 'A Portrait of Athens' I have attempted - rather impressionistically - to give a panorama of its present. But I have also brought in its past because I sincerely think that there is a continuity. "
Louis MacNeice
Think
Present
Portrait
" I would admit that poetry is something more than mere communication and that if that 'something more' could be abstracted from the whole, it might well prove to be that which makes the whole a poem. "
Louis MacNeice
Prove
Admit
Communication
" Broadcasting is plastic; while it can ape the press, it can also emulate the arts. "
Louis MacNeice
Arts
Plastic
Press
" Mysticism, in the narrow sense, implies a specific experience which is foreign to most poets and most men, but on the other hand, it represents an instinct which is a human sine qua non. "
Louis MacNeice
Men
Experience
Hand
" I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions. "
Louis MacNeice
Economics
Politics
Laughter
" It is a retrogression when human beings begin to insist on uniform, on one-mindedness, on conditioning their offspring so that all their reactions are automatic. "
Louis MacNeice
Uniform
Begin
Human Beings
" Nationalism of the Irish type is often regarded as reactionary. With the World Revolution and the Classless Society waiting for the midwife, why take a torch to the stable to assist at the birth of a puppy? Even if the puppy is pedigree. On this question I am unable to make up my mind. "
Louis MacNeice
Mind
Waiting
Revolution
" Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me. "
Louis MacNeice
Stone
Me
Otherwise
" My birth was managed so rottenly that my mother had eventually to have a hysterectomy, after which she was ill off & on till she dies for obscure reasons when I was just 7. "
Louis MacNeice
Just
Birth
Mother
" A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape. "
Louis MacNeice
Me
Think
Land
" Nearly all children have a feeling for rhythm in words, for the delicate pattern of nursery rhymes. Many adults have lost this feeling and, if they read verse at all, demand a far cruder music than that which they once appreciated. "
Louis MacNeice
Lost
Children
Words
" Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice. "
Louis MacNeice
Animals
Support
Practice
" Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort. "
Louis MacNeice
Walking
Call
Keep
" As things may turn out in the future, people may (though I doubt it) find that their work gives them all the enjoyment - physical, intellectual or aesthetic - which they may require. That certainly is not so now. "
Louis MacNeice
Future
Doubt
Aesthetic
" I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities. "
Louis MacNeice
Many
Envy
Though
" I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city. "
Louis MacNeice
Than
More
I Am
" All experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment. "
Louis MacNeice
Experiment
Made
Basis
" Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate. "
Louis MacNeice
Rest
Improvement
Democracy
" We are all fed from hundreds and thousands of hands. Often we do not know whose they are nor how they work. Only a few of us ever visualize the hands that grope in the coal mines or push levers in the mills or handle axes in the lumber camp. "
Louis MacNeice
Handle
Hands
Know