I feel, in equal intensity, attraction and repulsion for the academy. It is certainly no place for my species. But I am impressed by the number of brilliant minds that end up being lost in exchange for “integration”. Conventions, protocols, hierarchies… all of this undermining, stifling creativity, in an environment where the possible prize seems to be limited to recognition. To base a life’s work on the hope of applause? a better position, perhaps? It seems fragile. In the end, this path leads to tremendous frustration.
Tag: philosophy
Success Is the Ruin of the Artist
Cioran summarized: “Mourir inconnu, c’est peut-être cela la grâce”. Voltaire had already concluded: “Vivre et mourir inconnu”. Valéry, in the same vein, notes that “peut-être, si les grands hommes étaient aussi conscients qu’ils sont grands, il n’y aurait pas des grands hommes pour soi-même”. What to say? Success is a burier. It is perhaps the greatest misfortune that can befall an artist; it is the harbinger of ruin. Success takes away from him the fruitful bitter nights, the terrible and wonderful questioning about his own talent. Success robs him of loneliness and deludes, throwing sand in the inner fire that incites him to study, to continuous evolution, to the improvement of technique, to the need for a fuller expression. Worse, much worse. Success opens up “possibilities” and imposes a “new function” on the artist. This, in fact, is death to him.
There Is Only Humility in Silence
There is humility only in silence, in abstention, in the refusal of potentialities. A conviction, when externalized, is also a judgment of one’s own mental faculty. Only seeks to convince the one who holds himself in high esteem. A human being confesses a crime, but is unable to admit, by silence, the weakness of the intellect. Therefore, loquacity is the most evident sign of little wisdom.
No Society Can Endure and Thrive Without a Strong Cultural Base
No society can endure and prosper without a strong cultural base. A young country is naturally unstable. And a country that breaks with its origins, or stonewalls them, trying to erase its past, is heading toward collapse. Cultural destruction necessarily implies mass moral degradation. There is nothing more devastating to a society than an attempt to “rewrite the history”.