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Edith Sitwell

British poet (1887-1964)

Edith Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was an English poet and critic.

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Let us speak of our madness...
My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.

Quotes

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Poetry is the deification of reality.
 
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
 
I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.
 
It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
 
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?
  • Let us speak of our madness. We are always being called mad. If we are mad — we and our brothers in America who are walking hand in hand with us in the vanguard of progress — at least we are mad in company with most of our great predecessors and all the most intelligent foreigners. Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth were all mad in turn. We shall be proud to join them in the Asylum to which they are now consigned.
    • Yea and Nay : A series of lectures and counter-lectures given at the London school of economics in aid of the hospitals of London (1923) edited by C David Stelling, Section IV, Poetry and Modern Poetry
  • I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.
    • As quoted in The Observer (30 April 1950)
  • 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.
    • On converting to Roman Catholicism at the age of 67, in news reports (15 Aug 1955), as quoted in Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (1988) compiled by James B. Simpson
  • My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
    • "Some notes on my poetry" Collected Poems (1957)
  • 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.
    • Lecture "Young Poets" (1957) published in Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953-1961 (1964), p. 56
    • Variants:
      • Poetry is the deification of reality.
        • As quoted in Life magazine (4 January 1963)
      • The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
        • As quoted in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 247
  • 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.
    • "The Poet's Vision" (1959)
  • I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.
    • Life magazine (4 January 1963) attributed variant: 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 a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
    • As quoted in The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary Special Supplement (1966), p. 2047
  • 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.
    • As quoted in Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind : an Anthology (1976) by Elizabeth Salter, p. 176
  • My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
    • As quoted in Reader's Digest Vol. 111, No. 666, (October 1977)
  • A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
    • As quoted in Writers on Writing (1986) by Jon Winokur, p. 24
  • 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?
    • Quoted in Edith Sitwell, a Unicorn Among Lions (1981) by Victoria Glendinning, p. 54, and in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 74
  • I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
    • As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 176
  • I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
    • As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 226
  • 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.
    • As quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995) by Evan Esa

Clowns' Houses (1918)

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The dust lay dead and white
As powder on a mummy's face...
 
Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
Slowly enveloped me.

  • 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.

    • "Clowns' Houses"

  • 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.

    • "Clowns' Houses"

The Wooden Pegasus (1920)

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Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
The fire and splendour of the ancient world...
  • Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
    The fire and splendour of the ancient world;
    The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair;
    The songs that turned to gold the evening air
    When all the stars of heaven sang for joy.
    • "The Web of Eros"

Façades (1922)

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  • 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.
    • "The Last Gallop"
  • Oh how the Vacancy
    Laughed at them rushing by.
    "Turn again, flesh and brain,
    Only yourselves again!
    How far above the ape
    Differing in each shape,
    You with your regular
    Meaningless circles are!"
    • "Switchback"

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

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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.
Full text online at Poetry archive — with audio of Sitwell reading the poem · A Poetry Channel reading of the poem · Canticle 3, '"Still Falls the Rain'" a classical musical composition by Benjamin Britten in which the poem is sung
 
Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.
  • Still falls the Rain —
    Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
    He bears in His Heart all wounds, — those of the light that died,
    The last faint spark
    In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark...

  • See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
    It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

    Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
    That holds the fires of the world, — dark-smirched with pain
    As Caesar's laurel crown.

    Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
    Was once a child who among beasts has lain —
    "Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."

Green Song & Other Poems (1944)

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Heart and Mind

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  • The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
    Is greater than all gold, more powerful
    Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
    Like all that grows or leaps... so is the heart
    More powerful than all dust.
  • The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
    Is but a foolish wind.
  • 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.

The Canticle of the Rose (1949)

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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.
The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems, 1920-1947 (1949)
  • Mother or Murderer, you have
    given or taken life —
    Now all is one!
    • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise"
  • 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.
    • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise"
  • 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.
    • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise"

Taken Care Of (1965)

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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.
Taken Care Of : The Autobiography of Edith Sitwell (1965)
  • The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
    • Preface
  • Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us 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.
    • Ch. 15
  • Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
    • Ch. 19
  • 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.
    • "One–Way Song", p. 118
  • There are people, also, who cannot believe that beauty and gaiety are a part of goodness.
    When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.
    • p. 221

The Last Years of a Rebel (1967)

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I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
The Last Years of a Rebel : A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (1967) by Elizabeth Salter
  • I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
    • p. 24
  • People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.
    • p. 24
  • I wouldn't dream of following a fashion... how could one be a different person every three months?
    • p. 24
  • 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.
  • I am resigned to the fact that people who don't know me loathe me. Perhaps it is because I am a woman writing poetry. It must be annoying to a man who wants to write to see this horrid old lady who can.
  • Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
  • I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
    • Last words to her personal secretary (Elizabeth Salter) as she was being carried into an ambulance.


Misattributed

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  • Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
    I let the stars assume the whole of night.

    But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
    Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

    • This is from the poem "Answers" by Elizabeth Jennings, which has wrongly been attributed to Sitwell at a few sites on the internet.

Quotes about Sitwell

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Each of them is inhabited by a bland demon … valid enough to give them the right to speak with the authority of artists. ~ Rebecca West
  • I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. … I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. … I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
  • Her tall figure, swathed in black, looking like some strange eccentric bird... she seemed like an ageing princess come home from exile.
    • Alec Guinness on her appearance at her official reception into the Roman Catholic Church in August 1955.
  • Each of them is inhabited by a bland demon, as the German metaphysicians used to call that which gets into a man and makes him creative, not so forcibly that it turns them away from criticism, but valid enough to give them the right to speak with the authority of artists.
    • Rebecca West of Edith and her two brothers, in The Strange Necessity (1928) Ch. 5
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