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December 8, 2007
the ordered enlistment of intuition
No stupid literature, art, or music lasts. Aesthetic creation is intelligent in the highest degree. The intelligence of a major artist can be that of sovereign intellectuality. The minds of Dante or of Proust are among the most analytic, systematically informed, of which we have record. The political acumen of a Dostoevsky or a Conard is difficult to match. Witness the theoretical rigour of a Durer, of a Schoenberg. But intellectuality is only one facet of creative intelligence; it need not be dominant. More than the ordinary men or women, the significant painter, sculptor, musician or poet relates the raw material, the anarchic prodigalities of consciousness and sub-consciousness to the latencies, often unperceived, untapped before him, of articulation. This translation out of the inarticulate and the private into the general matter of human recognition requires the utmost crystallization and investment of introspection and control. We lack the right word for the extreme energizing and governance of instinct, for the ordered enlistment of intuition, which mark the artist.
George Steiner - Real Presences
Posted by amin at December 8, 2007 11:38 PM