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The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1970
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Chad Kyojun Kleitsch
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Just as that puzzled savage who has picked up - a strange cast-up from the ocean? - something unearthed from the sands? - or an obscure object fallen down from the sky? - intricate in curves, it gleams first dully and then with a bright thrust of light. Just as he turns it this way and that, turns it over, trying to discover what to do with it, trying to discover some mundane function within his own grasp, never dreaming of its higher function.
So also we, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters; boldly we direct it, we renew, reform and manifest it; we sell it for money, use it to please those in power; turn to it at one moment for amusement - right down to popular songs and night-clubs, and at another - grabbing the nearest weapon, cork or cudgel - for the passing needs of politics and for narrow-minded social ends. But art is not defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it gives to us a part of its secret inner light.
But shall we ever grasp the whole of that light? Who will dare to say that he has DEFINED Art, enumerated all its facets? Perhaps once upon a time someone understood and told us, but we could not remain satisfied with that for long; we listened, and neglected, and threw it out there and then, hurrying as always to exchange even the very best - if only for something new! And when we are told again the old truth, we shall not even remember that we once possessed it.
One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual
system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.
Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his
responsbility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence - in destitution, in prison, in sickness - his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.
But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human beings - they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this artist's vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by the work of his unworthy fingers.
Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art. Right back in the early morning twilights of mankind we received it from Hands which we were too slow to discern. And we were too slow to ask: FOR WHAT PURPOSE have we been given this gift? What are we to do with it?
And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die - art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?
Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.
Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly. And only the soul gives a groan...
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world." What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfill the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world," was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
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| Harrison Mitchell |
Excerpted from Beauty Will Save the World: The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Copyright © 1970 by the Nobel Foundation. Reprinted by permission of the Nobel Foundation. |
"Traveling is as refreshing for some as staying at home is for others. Solitude
in a mountain place fills with companionship for this one, dead-weariness
for that one. This person loves being in charge of the working of a community. This
one loves the ways that heated iron can be shaped with a hammer. Each has been
given a strong desire for certain work, love for those motions, and all motion
is love. The way sticks and pieces of dead grass and leaves shift about in
the wind and with the directions of rain and puddle water on the ground, those
motions are following the love they've been given."
-Rumi, "Love for Certain Work"
My illustrious friend, Thom, has invited me to reveal what I am reading reading right now on the not so random page 123. So I'd like to share an excerpt from White Noise by Don DeLillo:
"I turned off the radio, not to help me think but to keep me from thinking. Vehicles lurched and skidded. Someone threw a gum wrapper out a side window and Babette made an indignant speech about inconsiderate people littering the highways and countryside.
'I'll tell you something else that's happened before,' Heinrich said. 'We're running out of gas.'
The dial quivered on E.
'There's always extra,' Babette said.
'How can there be always extra?'
'That's the way the tank is constructed. So you don't run out.'
'There can't be always extra. If you keep going, you run out.'
'You don't keep going forever.'
'How do you know when to stop?' he said.
'When you pass a gas station,' I told him . . ."
-- Don DeLillo, White Noise
"Everyone makes experimental films in their dreams."
- Jeff Scher
Check out Jeff Scher's, new film "All the Wrong Reasons" on the NYT! It is delightful!
"Dreams are picture-driven, non-linear quilts of movie-like moments sprinkled with cryptic epiphanies. They play nightly in the private cinema of your head but the rub is the audience must be asleep. Then again, maybe sleep, or at least the suspension of conscious thought, is the ideal state for entering such a movie.
“All the Wrong Reasons” is an experiment in making a film that feels as if it has percolated up from the subconscious; a dream you can watch with your eyes open. It’s one of those big cathartic dreams, a labyrinth of fleeting moments full of metaphor and mischief. I wanted it to feel like a bumpy roller coaster ride in and out of the dark side of the brain where all the wrong reasons reside. And, as with all dreams, the meaning and significance are open to interpretation.
There are almost 3,000 paintings and collages in this film. I used rapidly changing color to give a shimmer to the animation and lots of collage to create a visually percussive texture. Shay Lynch’s score pulls all of the wildly disparate images together." - Jeff Scher
*
P.S. This film reminds me of a certain cartoon, I'll describe it here:
Frame 1: A woman awakens, her cat sleeping on her bed, to see a pixie surrounded by stars, "I'm your fairy godmother!" Frame 2: The fairy taps the woman on her head with a wand, "ping," and declares, "All your dreams shall come TRUE!" Frame 3: The woman sits up in her bed (oddly she has been wearing sunglasses throughout this story) and she is delighted! Frame 4: Suddenly, she is in a classroom full of students - naked (!), while someone hands her an algebra final she skipped a few years ago . .
:)
This beautiful day outside? It's beautiful, because you are in it!
"Our culture does not value poetry, and it drives poets crazy." -NYT
I've been apartment bound for most of the week, and I am beginning to recover now, but I still am not strong enough to see Hitoshi Toyoda's live performance and projection of 580 images at Anthology tonight! This event would be the perfect thing . . .
Where to begin? You are here, in the night, in the dreamscape that never lies to you, in the mysterious unknown, in the perforations of the physical world, and in the nature of life as it is . . .
I've been wondering about some of my complements over in the cinematic yang . . . Some may see reflections in the traditional film review (prosaic, compartmentalized, rational document that it is) that I cannot see. I realize that all truths wait in all things! If film reviews are what you are into, totally go ahead with that. Personally I don't feel that writing a film review is much of a challenge in comparison to what I have accomplished thus far, and I have no aspirations in this regard. My blood boils when writers, upheld as experts, admired as teachers, and awarded the brightest visibility as employees, openly hold the entire blogosphere in contempt. When that behavior is exhibited, the person ceases to be an expert, you know? Furthermore, I don't understand why bloggers give so much attention and linkage to film critics who insult everyone writing online. Why? What is up with that? Why not get in touch with the ubiquitous, humble bloggers and ask them what they think about the blogosphere?
(I guess that we all have to live out our own conflicts.)
When I am at my best, my writing is hot! But there will always be someone who is writing, or has written, or will write what I cannot express. I am called (!) to discover these worlds . . . the annihilation in the superabundance of being!
"I would now happily remain at the table while it was being cleared, and, if it was not a moment at which the girls of the little band might be passing, it was no longer solely towards the sea that I would turn my eyes. Since I had seen such things depicted in water-colours by Elstire, I sought to find again in reality, I cherished as though for their poetic beauty, the broken gestures of the knives still lying across one another, the swollen convexity of a discarded napkin into which the sun introduced a patch of yellow velvet, the half-empty glass which thus showed to greater advantage the sweep of its curved sides, and in the heart of its translucent crystal, clear as frozen daylight, some dregs of wine, dark but glittering with reflected lights, the displacement of solid objects, the transmutation of liquids by the effect of light and shade, the shifting colours of the plums which passed from green to blue and from blue to golden yellow in the half-plundered dish, the promenade of the antiquated chairs that came twice daily to take their places round the white cloth spread on the table as on an altar at which were celebrated the rites of the palate, and where in the hollows of the oyster-shells a few drops of lustral water had remained as in tiny holy-water stoups of stone; I tried to find beauty there where I had never imagined before that it could exist, in the most ordinary things, in the profundity of 'still life.'"
-- Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Part II, Within a Budding Grove, p. 613.
