It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past.

The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.

Art cannot progress by sticking to what is already familiar.

Solitude is an essential element of poetry.

The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.

The age of sages is past; the age of specialists has come.

The spirit of the age is not synonymous with what the public likes.