It is always dangerous for the artist to balance the need for comprehensiveness with the need not to stray too far from the essential. The first is necessary because it delimits, whether one likes it or not, the dimension of the artist himself, whose work will be considered short-sighted or vicious if it does not possess, if not a balance, a variety that brings it reasonably close to what life and the real world consist of. This is why some, determined to overcome this problem, end up losing themselves in works that add less and more mischaracterize the author’s identity. There is no sure measure. What is certain is that, just as insistence on obsessions that we do not possess may seem tiresome, it is discouraging when we come across works in which we find no trace of an artist we thought we knew.
What Kills Man Is Pride
What kills man is pride; it is what blurs the vision and clouds the living. Human dignity boils down to doing the best of what is possible, but what is possible never satisfies the pride. From it springs an insatiable yearning and a discontentment with what is enough to fill modest eyes. So it represents the disgust, the castration and the burial of the stimulus that, for many who never expected it, proved that the possible is sometimes distorted by the vision.
The More One Understands About Life…
The more one understands about life, the more the capacity to accept limitations becomes necessary; in short, the more humility becomes indispensable. Curiously, nature seems to make it more difficult the more one knows, when knowing is also necessary to improve it. Therefore, to cultivate it is to act rationally against nature, which seems to be the greatest obstacle—and the most important one to overcome—to full intellectual development.
He Who Realizes That Time Is the Substance…
He who realizes that time is the substance of life concludes, by deduction, that he will live as well as he can use the time at his disposal. Then he will realize, first of all, that he has no time at his disposal but now, and that therefore, extending the previous conclusion, he will live as well as he can use the now. The next step is the one that often discourages, and sometimes leads to suicide. The good use of the now is conditioned to means only partially controllable and always subject to the wheel of fortune. So, for some, it is possible to cling to a probable time as an ally against the more that fortune can get in the way of their objectives; but for others, who are averse to the indefinite, whose wisdom demands that they cling only to what is certain, it is unbearable to find that, for certain, there is only submission to the most immediate need.