“I never see anyone. I am not like other men. People ought to think of…” — John Davidson | V2Melody

“I never see anyone. I am not like other men. People ought to think of these things.”

Asserting the poet's radical difference from ordinary society · Conversation

About John Davidson

John Davidson

11 April 1857–23 March 1909

John Davidson was born on 11 April 1857 in Barrhead, Renfrewshire, and died on 23 March 1909, or shortly thereafter, in the waters off Penzance, Cornwall. He was a Scottish poet, playwright, novelist, critic, journalist, and tireless literary experimenter whose work stands at a crucial threshold in British writing. In…

More by John Davidson

Poems by John Davidson

More remarks by John Davidson

“Men are the universe become conscious; the simplest man should consider himself too great to be called after any name.”

Expression of materialist and individualist vision · Later philosophical writings

“Irony is the enigma within the enigma, the open secret, the only answer, the last word of philosophy, the nearest approach to truth; Irony affirms and delights in the whole.”

Defining irony as the integrating force of truth and philosophy · Essay / Letters to the Editor

“A poet is always a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate vanity. In his heart he says, I want my poetry to be remembered when Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are forgotten.”

On the grand and self-regarding ambitions of the true poet · A Rosary