On the Imagination ...

“The inevitable flux of the seeing eye toward measuring itself by the world it inhabits can only result in himself crushing humiliation unless the individual raise to some approximate co-extension with the universe. This is possible by the aid of the imagination.”

“In the composition, the artist does exactly what every eye must do with life, fix the particular with the universality of his own personality – Taught by the largeness of his imagination to feel every form which he sees moving within himself, he must prove the truth of this by expression.”

“It is a work of the imagination. It gives the feeling of completion by revealing the oneness of experience; it rouses rather than stupefies the intelligence by demonstrating the importance of personality, by showing the individual, depressed before it, that his life is valuable – when completed by the imagination. And then only. Such work elucidates.”

“The only realism in art is of the imagination. It is only thus that the work escapes plagiarism after nature and becomes a creation.

Invention of new forms to embody this reality of art is, must occupy all serious minds concerned.”

(William Carlos Williams, Spring and All.)