This most enchanting of mermaids, misanthropy, even seems to be fond of artists and to be, besides an object of worship, a primary source of inspiration to them. Beautiful lady: more than a mermaid, a muse! And I never cease to marvel at how useful are the barriers erected around the mind inclined to art. Vigny, and not Victor Hugo, and not Lamartine, was the one who personified the fullness of the poetic vocation. And worse for those who seek motivation among stones!
Tag: literature
No Matter How Much One Idealizes Style and Form…
No matter how much one idealizes style and form, both need execution to solidify and achieve an authentic unity. Once executed, or rather, during the attempt of execution, the idea becomes clearer and the artist evolves it until it fits his expressive intention. The spontaneous flashes that arise in the act of artistic realization, although they do not serve as a foundation, are often what brightens and makes a work worthy of the adjunct of art.
A Work That Does Not Sketch…
A work that does not sketch, that does not risk solutions to the problems it proposes, seems incomplete. It is inevitable… The high spirit must strive to surpass itself, must dare even if it fails, even if it feels the effort is useless after the battle. This is the only way to use judgment as a stimulating apparatus, as a delineator of barriers to be overcome, as a challenger of the limits of the will. Exposing problems, therefore, seems only the initial milestone of an intellectual path that unfolds from them.
Victor Hugo’s Fecundity
It seems an affront, an insult to find Victor Hugo having composed more than one hundred and fifty thousand verses in just one life. One hundred and fifty thousand! It is unbelievable, a real humiliation to be confronted with this unattainable fecundity, this poetic monument coming from the pen of a single man. If we exercise mathematics, we arrive at an average daily production that only seems reasonable to someone who spends his entire life only sleeping and composing verses. Considering the whole creative process that involves ideation, planning, structuring, realization and refinement; considering that a normal mind is exhausted in the tiresome work of hooking words in the dictionary, and that therefore a long working day is unfeasible, discouraging and even counterproductive, how to justify Victor Hugo? How can we accept his poetic work, knowing that there are plays, novels, essays under the same signature? It is amazing…