"Every great writer has one single obsession, and Lec tells us: "I wanted to tell the world just one word. Unable to do it I became a writer." And in another aphorism one is reminded of Picasso as he characteristically moves towards his creation through a continual grappling with and destruction of chaotic forms: "What is chaos? It is the Order destroyed during Creation." It was also Picasso who memorably called art "a lie which tells the truth", and Lec comes pretty close to the maestro with this one: "A beautiful lie? Listen! That's creativity." Lec sums up the predicament of the one gifted with creative powers, the well-known neurotic, pathological condition of the artist, in such words: "The richer your imagination, the poorer you feel." But then Lec also assures him: "Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination." Yet all that anguish and loneliness may be worth it for: "To suffer heartaches and not be a poet? Whatever for?""
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Azizul Hakeem, in Minor Prejudices : Essays on the Arts & Literature, Cultural Perspectives, and Personal Reflections (2008), p. 81
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Jerzy_Lec
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Stanisław Jerzy Lec
1909 – 1966
polnischer Aphoristiker und Lyriker
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