Life & Wisdom Quote by Edith Sitwell

Sitwell’s line flatters reality by refusing to flatter it. “Deification” isn’t mere decoration; it’s an act of elevation with theological overtones, the kind that implies ritual, selection, and belief. Poetry, in her formulation, doesn’t escape the real so much as consecrate it, turning the ordinary into an object worthy of awe. That’s a bracing claim from a poet who lived through two world wars and the shattering of old certainties. In a century that kept proving reality could be brutal, absurd, and mechanized, Sitwell stakes out a counter-power: the poem as a kind of secular liturgy that restores meaning without lying about the raw materials.

The subtext is also a defense of art against the perennial charge of frivolity. If poetry “deifies” reality, then it isn’t an ivory-tower diversion; it’s an interpretive technology, capable of granting significance where modern life tends to drain it away. The wording matters: she doesn’t say poetry invents a better world, or “beautifies” the existing one. “Deification” suggests transformation through attention. The world is the same, but our relation to it changes. A streetlamp, a body, a political catastrophe, a snatch of gossip can become charged, not because the poet escapes facts, but because the poet insists facts contain radiance when held in the right frame.

It’s also a sly assertion of authority. To deify is to choose what deserves worship. Sitwell implies the poet isn’t just a recorder of experience; the poet is a maker of value, quietly competing with religion, journalism, and power for the right to tell us what matters.