Quotes by Simon Vestdijk

Allowing for all the restrictions involved when trying to rank individual artists by using general criteria, we have to say it is a measure of inscrutability and hardness, mostly already perceptible in their craftsmanship, an elusive asceticism, a stubbornness which manifests itself most clearly in a total lack of accommodation to public taste.

An outsider looking at the poetry of the United States sees mainly Walt Whitman's beard, with the sombre mask of Edgar Allan Poe looming immediately beyond it.

If it were to be claimed that intentional verse is not yet poetry, then I would equally have the right to claim that the most consummate, most differentiated sound poems are no longer poetry but a singular imitation of another art: music or declamation.

Intention and realisation, and potential and fulfilment lie very close to one another, which, on the one hand, guarantees the living and spontaneous character of this art, while on the other requires more co-operation on the part of the reader.

The poetical intention, if concentrated enough, is already poetry, or rather is the essence of poetry, and is the only thing that lends meaning to the poetry. Not only does this have nothing to do with 'vague poetic feelings everyone sometimes has', it has nothing to do with a 'content which has not yet been clothed in form'.