Arquivo de literature | Page 110 of 132

The Great Art Demands the Great Themes

The accurate study of the artistic technique runs the great risk of clouding the motivation of the art in the author’s head. Beauty is fundamentally created from acute perception and not from abstract motivation. If aesthetics escapes the understanding of the weak rationalism, it is not a consequence that, freed from experience, represents anything. The expressive effect is supported by the technique, but it will never be powerful if based on frivolity: to be great, art demands the great themes.

____________

The Living Representation of Contrary Psychological Manifestations

The grandiose, in literature, involves the living representation of contrary psychological manifestations. Great authors, of course, narrow down and move away from opposing ideologies, depending on the point of view, because the great art involves the ability to grasp reality from various perspectives. A great author will never allow himself to be addicted, predictable, and therefore will never be fit into an ideological box without thousands of reservations.

____________

I Would Be Infinitely Happier If I Were a Tree

I would be infinitely happier if I were a tree. I correct: a stone—today trees are embraced…—Stones do not listen, they are not bothered, they are not asked, they do not pay taxes and, that is exactly the word, they live in peace. If not as components of the landscape, they are invisible. And who can tell the limits of their inner universe? The incapacity to listen—I presume; because if they listen, they never react…—is something really enviable and superior. The weak human mind, so vulnerable to terrible disturbances coming from noise, which submit it and silence it in extreme ease, has only to envy the placidity of the life of this noble rocky being…

____________

The Word “Study”

The word “study,” in common sense, refers to acquiring training for the performance of a professional function. The “study,” if taken as the search for the answer to questions of a personal, existential nature or as the mere investigation of existence, is no longer “study,” but a hobby. That is to say: if not destined to a practical purpose, the effort is less noble, dispensable. That, of course, is what the pragmatism of these days thinks, the pragmatism that dimensions its own old sagacity agonizing on a hospital bed.

____________