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December 27, 2007
the meeting with death
However inspired, no poem, no painting, no musical piece – though music comes closest – can make us at home with death, let alone “weep it from its purpose”. But it is within the compass of the arts that the metaphor of resurrection is given the edge of felt conjecture. The central conceit of the artist that the work shall outlast his own death, the existential truth that great literature, painting, architecture, music have survived their creators, are not accidental or self-regarding. It is the lucid intensity of its meeting with death that generates in aesthetic forms that statement of vitality, of life-presence, which distinguishes serious thought and feeling from the trivial and the opportunistic.
George Steiner - Real Presences
Posted by amin at December 27, 2007 6:40 PM