Monday, July 25, 2011

Gabriel Josipovici, What Ever Happened to Modernism? page 160

As for Stravinsky, his dialogue with the past goes back to his first ballets, though it was perhaps only with Pulcinella that he became conscious of what this involved. 'Pulcinella was my discovery of the past', he later wrote, 'the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course--the first of many love affairs in that direction--but it was a look in the mirror too.' And then, echoing Eliot's 'Bad poets imitate, good poets steal': 'People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals, cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect", but I love.'

No comments: