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September 28, 2005
cameron on photography
What is focus-who has a right to say what focus is the legitimate focus-my aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art combining the real, ideal, and sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and Beauty.
Julia Cameron
Posted by amin at 1:09 PM | TrackBack
September 27, 2005
rimbaud on the poet
The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!
Rimbaud
Posted by amin at 10:59 PM | TrackBack
September 26, 2005
afternoon song
Although your wicked eyebrows give you a strange look
which is not that of an angle, witch with alluring eyes,
I adore you, o my frivolous, my terrifying passion,
with the devotion of a priest for his idol.
the desert and the forest lend their scents to your rough tresses,
your head has the angles of enigma and secret.
about your flesh perfume hovers as if around a censer;
you cast a spell like evening, hot and shadowy nymph.
ah, the strongest philtres connot equal your lazy charm,
and you know the caress that brings the dead back to life.
your hips are in love with your back and your breasts,
and you excite thecushions with your languorous poses.
sometimes, to calm your mysterious fury,
you cover me, with a serious look,
in bites and kisses;
you tear me apart, dark beauty, with a mocking laugh,
and then you lay upon my heart your look, gentle as the moon.
under your stain shoes, under your charming silken feet,
I place my greatest joy, my genius and my destiny,
my soul cured by you, by you, light and color!
explosion of heat in my black siberia!
Baudelaire
Posted by amin at 4:15 PM | TrackBack
September 25, 2005
tehura lay motionless...
One day I was obliged to go to Papeete. I had promised to return that evening, but the carriage only took me half-way so I had to do the rest on foot and I didn't get home until one 0'clock in the morning...when I opened the door...I saw her...
Tehura lay motionless, naked, belly down on the bed: she stared up at me, her eyes wide with fear, she seemed to know who I was. For a moment I too felt a strange uncertainty. Tehura's dread was contagious: it seemed to me that a phosphorescent light poured from her staring eyes. I had never seen her so lovely: above all, I had never seen her beauty so moving. And in the half-shadow, which no doubt seethed with dangerous apparitions and ambiguous shapes, I feared to make the slightest movement, in the case the child would be terrified out of her mind. Did I know what she thought I was, in that instant? Perhaps she took me, with my anguished face, for one of those legendary demons or specters, the Tupapaus that filled the sleepless nights of her people.
Gauguin - Noa Noa
Posted by amin at 1:28 PM | TrackBack
September 24, 2005
tolstoy on art III
A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist- not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
Leo Tolstoy - What Is Art?
Posted by amin at 1:02 PM | TrackBack
September 21, 2005
tolston on art II
Art, like speech, is a means of communication, and therefore of progress, i.e., of the movement of humanity forward toward perfection. Speech renders accessible to men of the latest generation all the knowledge discovered by the experience and reflection, both of preceding generations and of the best and foremost men of their own times; art renders accessible to the men of the latest generation all the feelings experienced by their predecessors, and those also which are being felt by their best and foremost contemporaries. And as the evolution of knowledge proceeds by truer and more necessary knowledge , dislodging and replacing what is mistaken and unnecessary, so the evolution of feeling proceed through art-feelings less kind and less needful for that end. That is the purpose of art. And speaking now of its subject matter, the more art fulfills that purpose the better the art, and the less it fulfills it, the worse the art.
Leo Tolstoy - What Is Art?
Posted by amin at 11:15 AM | TrackBack
September 20, 2005
tolstoy on art
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the repression of man's emotion by external signs, it is not the production of pleasing objects; and above all, it is not pleasure; but is is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity."
Leo Tolstoy - What Is Art?
Posted by amin at 5:51 PM | TrackBack
September 18, 2005
touch of madness
Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him; the former can easily assume the required mood, and the later may be actually beside himself with emotion.
Aristotle