Poggio Quotes

“Freedom here has nothing to do with political liberty, or a notion of rights, or the license to say whatever he wished, or the ability to go wherever he chose. It's rather the experience of withdrawing inwardly from the press of the wold, in which he himself was so ambitiously engaged. And in sphering himself in a space apart. For Poggio that experience was what it meant to immerse himself in ancient book. "I am free for reading.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“The religion of this 'I', the poetry of this 'I', and the philosophy of the same 'I' that from Poggio and Felelfo to Byron and Goethe produced a number of works astonishing for their profundity and brilliance have finally exhausted its content; and in the poetry of Decadence we see the rapid falling away of the empty shell of this 'I'. We remarked previously about the exaggeration without the exaggerated object, and about the precious style without the subject of this preciosity, which characterize this poetry — this is so in regard to its form; in regard to its content Decadence is above all hopeless egoism. The world, as an object of love, of interest, even as the object of indignation or contempt, has disappeared from this "poetry”; the world has disappeared, not only as an object exciting some reaction in this vapid 'I', but also as a spectator and possible judge of this 'I'; it is not even present.

("On Symbolists And Decadence")”
― Vasily Rozanov

“That freedom, the plunging back into the ancient past, appears always to have heightened his alienation from the present. To sure his love for classical Latin didn't lead him to idealize, as some of his contemporaries did Ancient Roman history, Poggio understand that history had it's full measure of full folly and wickedness. But he was aware that the city in which he lived was a pathetic shadow of it's past glory.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern