Literary Birthday – 3 October – Louis Aragon

Five Quotes

1. I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
2. Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.
3. Most people have never known solitude…. But there are a few of the other kind who can go back to their rooms anywhere and close the door on the whole world, and feel that they need never emerge.
4. Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvellous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.
5. We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

Louis Aragon was a French poet, novelist and editor. He was a founder of Surrealism with Paul Éluard, André Breton, Luis Buñuel, and others. He is the author of Treatise on Style and Paris Peasant.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_Aragon.jpg

Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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