Poetic Composition Quotes

“We have developed a need that we cannot satisfy in reality: to hear people in the most dificult situations speak well and at length; we are delighted when the tragic hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and altogether intellectual brightness, where life approaches abysses and me in reality usually lose their heads and certainly linguistic felicity. This kind of deviation from nature is perhaps the most agreeable repast for human pride: for its sake man loves art as the expression of a lofty, heroic unnaturalness and convention. We rightly reproach a dramatic poet if he does not transmute everything into reason and words but always retains in his hands a residue of silence—just as we are dissatisfied with the operatic composer who cannot find melodies for the highest sentiments but only a sentimental "natural" stammering and screaming. At this point nature is supposed to be contradicted. Here the vulgar attraction of illusion is supposed to give way to a higher attraction.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs