A salient quote for aspiring writers

By Alan Russell

Sat, 10 Feb 2018
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3 comments
 

Currently reading Simone de Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance and found the following:

'There are two ways to be a great writer: painting powerful, tragic fresoes like Shakespeare, or else, describing the tiny details of life in depth and width and with great precision.

Surprisingly this has been attributed to Stalin.

Certificate U
Non-fiction
The Martini Collection
Quotations

Comments

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

I think Stalin was a poet at one point, wasn't he?

 

Submitted by Ewan on

the Stalinist regime, a writer was "expected" to be an "Engineer of Human Souls. This sounds poetic but the reality meant writing propaganda to order for the state. Great writing was produced by un-publish/ed/able writers and self-published samizdatels on their Roneo machines. The NKVD and later the Ministry for Internal Affairs were told to look out for people with blue fingers.

Josef Skoverecky, a Czech/Canadian writer, wrote a novel with the phrase as its title.

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Submitted by Parson Thru on

The latter seems to have a strong tradition in Russian literature. Heavy writing, figuratively and literally.

Parson Thru