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What An Artist Is For Is To Tell Us What We See But Do Not Know That We See.

-Edith Sitwell

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What An Artist Is

Edith Sitwell

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What An Artist Is For Is To Tell Us What We See But Do Not Know That We See.

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More From Edith Sitwell

I Have Often Wished I Had Time To Cultivate Modesty... But I Am Too Busy Thinking About Myself.

But I Saw The Little-ant Men As They Ran Carrying The World's Weight Of The World's Filth And The Filth In The Heart Of Man-- Compressed Till Those Lusts And Greeds Had A Greater Heat Than That Of The Sun.

The Ghost Of The Heart Of Manred Cain And The More Murderous Brain Of Man, Still Redder Nero That Conceived The Death Of His Mother Earth, And Tore Her Womb, To Know The Place Where He Was Conceived.

... All Ugliness Passes, And Beauty Endures, Excepting Of The Skin.

My Poems Are Hymns Of Praise To The Glory Of Life.

What Is The Special Privilege Of Youth? It Is, I Think, The Power Of Looking Forward, The Firm Belief That The Future Holds Something That Is Worth Possessing, And That, Therefore, One Can Let The Present Moment Drop From One Without Regret And Without Fear.

White As A Winding Sheet, Masks Blowing Down The Street: Moscow, Paris London, Vienna - All Are Undone. The Drums Of Death Are Mumbling, Rumbling, And Tumbling, Mumbling, Rumbling, And Tumbling, The World's Floors Are Quaking, Crumbling And Breaking.

I Have Taken This Step Because I Want The Discipline, The Fire And The Authority Of The Church. I Am Hopelessly Unworthy Of It, But I Hope To Become Worthy.

I Am An Unpopular Electric Eel Set In A Pond Of Goldfish.

I'm Afraid I'm Being An Awful Nuisance.

The Last Faint Spark In The Self-murdered Heart, The Wounds Of The Sad Uncomprehending Dark, The Wounds Of The Baited Bear,-- The Blind And Weeping Bear Whom The Keepers Beat On His Helpless Flesh . . . The Tears Of The Hunted Hare.

I Wish The Government Would Put A Tax On Pianos For The Incompetent.

I Am One Of Those Unhappy Persons Who Inspire Bores To The Greatest Flights Of Art.

What The Reporters Are Like! They Are Mad With Excitement At The Thought Of My Approaching Demise. Kind Sister Farquhar, My Nurse, Spends Much Of Her Time In Throwing Them Downstairs. But One Got In The Other Day, And Asked Me If I Mind The Fact That I Must Die.

If Certain Critics And Poetasters Had Their Way, 'ordinary Piety' And Its Child, Dullness, Would Be The Masters Of Poetry.

Your Soul: Pure Glucose Edged With Hints Of Tentative And Half-soiled Tints

I May Say That I Think Greed About Poetry Is The Only Permissible Greed - It Is, Indeed, Unavoidable.

Virginia Woolf's Writing Is No More Than Glamorous Knitting. I Believe She Must Have A Pattern Somewhere.

My Temper Is Not Spoilt. I Am Absolutely Non-homicidal. Nor Do I Ever Attack Unless I Have Been Attacked First, And Then Heaven Have Mercy Upon The Attacker, Because I Don't! I Just Sharpen My Wits On A Wooden Head As A Cat Sharpens Its Claws On The Wood Legs Of A Table.

Eccentricity Is Not, As Some Would Believe, A Form Of Madness. It Is Often A Kind Of Innocent Pride, And The Man Of Genius And The Aristocrat Are Frequently Regarded As Eccentrics Because Genius And Aristocrat Are Entirely Unafraid Of And Uninfluenced By The Opinions And Vagaries Of The Crowd.

My Personal Hobbies Are Reading, Listening To Music, And Silence.

Winter Is The Time For Comfort, For Good Food And Warmth, For The Touch Of A Friendly Hand And For A Talk Beside The Fire: It Is The Time For Home.

It Is As Unseeing To Ask What Is The Use Of Poetry As It Would Be To Ask What Is The Use Of Religion.

The Living Blind And Seeing Dead Together Lie As If In Love . . . There Was No More Hating Then, And No More Love; Gone Is The Heart Of Man.

Virginia Woolf, I Enjoyed Talking To Her, But Thought Nothing Of Her Writing. I Considered Her 'a Beautiful Little Knitter.

When We Think Of Cruelty, We Must Try To Remember The Stupidity, The Envy, The Frustration From Which It Has Arisen.

Tall Windows Show Infinity; And, Hard Reality, The Candles Weep And Pry And Dance Like Lives Mocked At By Chance. The Rooms Are Vast As Sleep Within; When Once I Ventured In, Chill Silence, Like A Surging Sea, Slowly Enveloped Me.

Said The Sun To The Moon-'when You Are But A Lonely White Crone, And I, A Dead King In My Golden Armour Somewhere In A Dark Wood, Remember Only This Of Our Hopeless Love That Never Till Time Is Done Will The Fire Of The Heart And The Fire Of The Mind Be One

Winter Is The Time For Comfort, For Good Food And Warmth, For The Touch Of A Friendly Hand And For A Talk Beside The Fire: It Is The Time For Home. It Is No Season In Which To Wander The World As If One Were The Wind Blowing Aimlessly Along The Streets Without A Place To Rest, Without Food, And Without Time Meaning Anything To One, Just As Time Means Nothing To The Wind.

Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm.

It Is Hardly Respectable To Be Good Nowadays.

In The Augustan Age ... Poetry Was ... The Sister Of Architecture; With The Romantics, And Their Heightened Vowel-sense, Resulting In Different Melodic Lines, She Became The Sister Of Music; In The Present Day, She Appears Like The Sister Of Horticulture, Each Poem Growing According To The Law Of Its Own Nature.

Still Falls The Rain - Dark As The World Of Man, Black As Our Loss - Blind As The Nineteen Hundred And Forty Nails Upon The Cross.

I Have Never, In All My Life, Been So Odious As To Regard Myself As 'superior' To Any Living Being, Human Or Animal. I Just Walked Alone - As I Have Always Walked Alone.

I Wouldn't Dream Of Following A Fashion... How Could One Be A Different Person Every Three Months?

The Aim Of Flattery Is To Soothe And Encourage Us By Assuring Us Of The Truth Of An Opinion We Have Already Formed About Ourselves.

A Great Many People Now Reading And Writing Would Be Better Employed Keeping Rabbits.

The Poet Speaks To All Men Of That Other Life Of Theirs That They Have Smothered And Forgotten.

I Am Not Eccentric. It's Just That I Am More Alive Than Most People. I Am An Unpopular Electric Eel Set In A Pond Of Goldfish.

It Is Part Of The Poet's Work To Show Each Man What He Sees But Does Not Know He Sees.

By 'happiness' I Do Not Mean Worldly Success Or Outside Approval, Though It Would Be Priggish To Deny That Both These Things Are Most Agreeable. I Mean The Inner Consciousness, The Inner Conviction That One Is Doing Well The Thing That One Is Best Fitted To Do By Nature.

Picasso Was A Delightful, Kindly, Friendly, Simple Little Man. When I Met Him He Was Extremely Excited And Overjoyed That His Mother-in-law Had Just Died, And He Was Looking Forward To The Funeral.

The Poet Is A Brother Speaking To A Brother Of "a Moment Of Their Other Lives" - A Moment That Had Been Buried Beneath The Dust Of The Busy World.

Our Hearts Seemed Safe In Our Breasts And Sang To The Light The Marrow In The Bone We Dreamed Was Safe. . . The Blood In The Veins, The Sap In The Tree Were Springs Of Deity.

Poetry Ennobles The Heart And The Eyes, And Unveils The Meaning Of All Things Upon Which The Heart And The Eyes Dwell. It Discovers The Secret Rays Of The Universe, And Restores To Us Forgotten Paradises.

If One Is A Greyhound, Why Try To Look Like A Pekingese?

I'm Dying, But Otherwise I'm In Very Good Health.

All Great Poetry Is Dipped In The Dyes Of The Heart.

By The Time I Was Eleven Years Old, I Had Been Taught That Nature, Far From Abhorring A Vacuum, Positively Adores It.

The Reason Why Matthew Arnold, To My Feeling, Fails Entirely As A Poet (though No Doubt His Ideas Were Good - At Least, I Am Told They Were) Is That He Had No Sense Of Touch Whatsoever. Nothing Made Any Impression On His Skin. He Could Feel Neither The Shape Nor The Texture Of A Poem With His Hands.

The Public Will Believe Anything, So Long As It Is Not Founded On Truth.

Rhythm Is One Of The Principal Translators Between Dream And Reality. Rhythm Might Be Described As, To The World Of Sound, What Light Is To The World Of Sight. It Shapes And Gives New Meaning. Rhythm Was Described By Schopenhauer As Melody Deprived Of Its Pitch.

The Child And The Great Artist -- These Alone Receive The Sensation Fresh As It Was At The Beginning Of The World.

[history Is] That Terrible Mill In Which Sawdust Rejoins Sawdust.

The Trouble With Most Englishwomen Is That They Will Dress As If They Had Been A Mouse In A Previous Incarnation... They Do Not Want To Attract Attention.

What An Artist Is For Is To Tell Us What We See But Do Not Know That We See.

Good Taste Is The Worst Vice Ever Invented.

All Great Art Contains An Element Of The Irrational.

As For The Usefulness Of Poetry, Its Uses Are Many. It Is The Deification Of Reality. It Should Make Our Days Holy To Us. The Poet Should Speak To All Men, For A Moment, Of That Other Life Of Theirs That They Have Smothered And Forgotten.

I'm Not The Man To Baulk At A Low Smell, I'm Not The Man To Insist On Asphodel. This Sounds Like A He-fellow, Don't You Think? It Sounds Like That. I Belch, I Bawl, I Drink.

The Trouble About Most Englishwomen Is That They Will Dress As If They Had Been A Mouse In A Previous Incarnation, Or Hope To Be One In The Next.

Why Not Be Oneself? That Is The Whole Secret Of A Successful Appearance. If One Is A Greyhound, Why Try To Look Like A Pekingese?

Hot Water Is My Native Element. I Was In It As A Baby, And I Have Never Seemed To Get Out Of It Ever Since.

Art Is Magic, Not Logic. This Craze For The Logical Spirit In Irrational Shape Is Part Of The Present Harmful Mania For Uniformity.

People Are Usually Made Dames For Virtues I Do Not Possess.

Vulgarity Is, In Reality, Nothing But A Modern, Chic, Pert Descendant Of The Goddess Dullness.

As For The Usefulness Of Poetry, Its Uses Are Many. It Is The Deification Of Reality.

The Arts Are Life Accelerated And Concentrated.

One's Own Surroundings Means So Much To One, When One Is Feeling Miserable.

The Light Would Show (if It Could Harden) Eternities Of Kitchen Garden

The Busy Chatter Of The Heat Shrilled Like A Parakeet; And Shuddering At The Noonday Light The Dust Lay Dead And White As Powder On A Mummy's Face, Or Fawned With Simian Grace Round Booths With Many A Hard Bright Toy And Wooden Brittle Joy: The Cap And Bells Of Time The Clown That, Jangling, Whistled Down Young Cherubs Hidden In The Guise Of Every Bird That Flies; And Star-bright Masks For Youth To Wear, Lest Any Dream That Fare Bright Pilgrim Past Our Ken, Should See Hints Of Reality.

The Poet Is The Complete Lover Of Mankind.

Rhythm Is One Of The Principal Translators Between Dream And Reality.

I Am Patient With Stupidity But Not With Those Who Are Proud Of It.

There Is No Truth. Only Points Of View.

Isn't It Curious How One Has Only To Open A Book Of Verse To Realise Immediately That It Was Written By A Very Fine Poet, Or Else That It Was Written By Someone Who Is Not A Poet At All. In The Case Of The Former, The Lines, The Images, Though They Are Inherent In Each Other, Leap Up And Give One This Shock Of Delight. In The Case Of The Latter, They Lie Flat On The Page, Never Having Lived.

The Great Sins And Fires Break Out Of Me Like The Terrible Leaves From The Bough In The Violent Spring. I Am A Walking Fire, I Am All Leaves.

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