"For this village, even were it incomparably more remote and incredibly more primitive, is the West, the West onto which I have been so strangely grafted. These people cannot be, from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modern world, in effect, even if they do not know it. The most illiterate among them is related, in a way that I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York’s Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in their full glory—but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive."
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Academics from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesNovelists from New York CityPlaywrights from the United StatesAfrican Americans
Original Language: English
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James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (2 August 1924 – 1 December 1987) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and social critic.
146 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by James Baldwin →
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