WIST Quotations

Barzun, Jacques -- Interview (1986-12-04) by John C. Tibbetts, “Jacques Barzun on Robert Schumann”

Dave — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 16:00:41 +0000

My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don’t need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let’s play him more.

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
Interview (1986-12-04) by John C. Tibbetts, “Jacques Barzun on Robert Schumann”
(Source)

Wilder, Thornton -- “The Art of Fiction No. 16,” interview by Richard H. Goldstone, The Paris Review (1956, Winter)

Dave — Fri, 24 May 2024 16:11:52 +0000

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it. On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity. […] The theater is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.”

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) American novelist and playwright
“The Art of Fiction No. 16,” interview by Richard H. Goldstone, The Paris Review (1956, Winter)
(Source)

Collected in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Thornton Wilder (1992).

Nathan, George Jean -- The Critic and the Drama, ch. 2 (1922)

Dave — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 19:36:57 +0000

One does not go to the theater to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright.

George Jean Nathan (1892-1958) American editor and critic
The Critic and the Drama, ch. 2 (1922)
(Source)

Bunner, H. C. -- “Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe”

Dave — Mon, 18 May 2020 21:22:58 +0000

Shake was a dramatist of note:
He lived by writing things to quote.

H. C. Bunner (1855-1896) American novelist and poet [Henry Cuyler Bunner]
“Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe”
(Source)

Referring to Shakespeare, who is quite quotable (and, in the rest of the poem, referencing Molière and Goethe, the last of which he rhymes with "teeth"). More information on the poem at the Source link.

Sometimes paraphrased, "Shakespeare was a dramatist of note / Who lived by writing things to quote."