Chapter 6 Art

1 Everyone has that wonderful momentary feeling, but most people can't grasp it. The trend of daily trivial life rushes them forward, and they have no time or care to recollect and experience it.Some people catch it, but they can't give form, can't express it.Only a few can both grasp and give form.Human sensibility is innate and therefore easy.The most difficult thing is to give proper form to your own feelings.This is the difference between a genius and an average smart person.It is also for this reason that many people have good sensibilities, but only a handful of them offer something of their own to the treasure house of world culture.

2 There is a kind of person who has very good sensibility and wide range of knowledge, but everything is fragments and has no ability to organize them into a living body. It is true that knowledge and feelings are important, but what is more important is the ability to control them and be good at giving form.Otherwise - everything will be lost. 3 Simplicity is the character of the master, which is reflected in his daily demeanor as well as in his works.It's a rich simplicity, a profound plainness, a confident modesty that knows it needs no pretense.On the contrary, the meager and superficial people always show pomp and arrogance in their words and works, because otherwise they would not be able to convince themselves and others that they are also so-called artists.

4 Only the simple things can really move the heart.Pompous things only disturb the mind. 5 It is an extraordinary skill to make a simple thing mysterious and complicated, or to make a complicated thing simple and clear.The former relies on association and reasoning, while the latter relies on intuition and insight.The former cannot be done by non-smart people, but the latter must not only be smart, but also honest. 6 Tolstoy's greatness lies in his extraordinary simplicity and truth.Compared with him, many writers are too intellectual, and even when they write about civilians, they are full of intellectual language.On the contrary, the intellectuals in his works still speak ordinary language, the language of everyday life.In fact, it has become a habit for people to speak in the language of life and write books in the language of books.Speaking in the language of books and writing in the language of life are both difficult tasks. The former must be done by an incurable nerd, and the latter must be done by an unattainable master.

7 The writing is simple but difficult, and unique is also difficult. The most difficult thing is to find the unique in the simple. The ordinary sentences throughout the text read differently.In this way, only the ineffable uniqueness can be understood, and it can be called style. 8 Deliberately seeking uniqueness is another face of mediocrity. You will find that it is actually imitating secretly, and it is also easy to be imitated and copied.True uniqueness cannot be imitated.It can't be seen or touched, but you feel it everywhere.It is not some elaborate gesture, but the soul that runs through the author's entire work.This is the style I understand.

9 A good artist is like a good woman and a man, always so pure, this is a kind of mature simplicity, a kind of simplicity with depth and strength.They can constantly enrich themselves, but they are not infected by the glamor of the times, and they are not shaken by success or failure. They can endure loneliness and hustle and bustle, and always maintain their true colors. 10 What an artist can pursue is nothing but success in life, fame after death, and the joy of creation.If the world turns around, the success in life is accidental.After death, everything is empty, and fame after death is also meaningless.Only the joy of creation is the most real and most graspable.An artist is a man who enjoys pleasure in time, and his pleasure is the joy of creation, and this alone is enough to make him indifferent to his success in life and his reputation after death.

11 Today, the auction price of a painting by Van Gogh is as high as millions or even tens of thousands of dollars, and all his living expenses during his lifetime are not enough to make a small fraction of this figure. Would you rather be Van Gogh or an auctioneer? I don't believe your answer. 12 A lifetime of exploring skills, and when the skills are finally perfected, life is about to end.This is the sorrow of the master of art. 13 I can understand those artists who destroy their unsatisfactory works. Their motivation is not to promote good and hide evil for themselves, but because they are obsessed with beauty.

14 Every muses will wander forever.Only Pharisees have the blessing to live and work in peace and contentment. 15 Perhaps most of the novelty depends on forgetting.A man who has worked out all his feelings and kept them in his mind will soon find that there is nothing new in the world. Artists are the most forgetful people, and the world in his eyes is always fresh. 16 The artist is often not sociable, he is too focused on his heart.In ordinary social situations, he may appear taciturn and absent-minded, making him not an interesting figure to the layman.But many people regard the lively and interesting social occasions as a sign of artistic temperament.

17 The so-called artistic temperament actually includes two completely different types.One is the poetic temperament, which is often melancholic.The other is the temperament of an actor, which is often unrestrained.The former creates, the latter imitates.I'm not referring to a career here.In fact, some poets are actors, and they are imitating; some actors are poets, and they are creating. 18 Schopenhauer said that art is the anesthetic of life.Nietzsche said that art is the stimulant of life.Actually not the same thing?Alcohol is both a narcotic and a stimulant.Art is the wine of life.As for which effect is more significant, it varies from person to person, just as people with different constitutions have different reactions to alcohol.

19 Literature is the expression of life feelings and the depiction of life pictures, and philosophy is the understanding and thinking of the fundamental issues of life. In this sense, literature and philosophy are closely related, and a good writer cannot be without philosophical literacy.However, the fashionable practice in today's literary world is to use new concepts and terminology in philosophy, and think that this is the pursuit of the philosophical depth of literary creation and literary criticism. Bad philosophy corrupts literature even more. 20 The fashion in criticism today is to churn out conceptual garbage and then dump it all on works that fall into its field of vision.This group of idiots who know neither philosophy nor art, their only survival strategy is to pretend to be ridiculous in front of philosophers, exaggerating the temperament of fake art, and pretending to be profound in front of artists, playing with pseudo-philosophical terminology.

twenty one I divide prose into two categories: art and craft.In tourist areas, there are often small vendors selling the same low-quality handicrafts.The same is true in travel literature. twenty two In the West, the masters of modern art (poetry, painting, music) are often masters of classical art at one time.But it is said that there are many natural modernists here. twenty three Sometimes, a failure in artistic creation can provide an opportunity to reveal new discoveries and develop a new style or genre.Intentionally realistic, the result failed, but who knows whether the inaccuracy will be a successful deformation?

Perhaps, the mistakes of consciousness actually originate from the truth in the unconscious. Then, the successful works of realism are classical works, and the unsuccessful works are modern works?No kidding! twenty four For a true artist, art is always an end in itself, while love is objectively only a means.However, when he fell in love and experienced the situation, the object of his love was the goal, and art seemed to be the means instead.He sang, wrote, and presented his works to his idols.It was not until the love had died away that the true value of his work was established. 25 If I were a woman, I would love to befriend an artist, to hear him talk about his work, whine, and talk crazy.But I will never marry him.Reading the works of artists is enjoyment, but living with them is suffering.Most of the artist's love ends in misfortune, and the responsibility never lies with women.He has hell in his heart, and no one can lead him to heaven. 26 It is not necessary for women to advance art by themselves.There are some strange women with extremely keen artistic intuition in the world, they are shining like stars in the sky of art masters.I think of Goethe and Beethoven's Bettina, Wagner and Romain Rolland's Madame Meisenberg, Nietzsche and Freud's Salome, Tchaikovsky's Madame Meck. 27 When Hegel called modern times "the age of prose," he meant "prose" as a derogatory term.However, this is not necessarily fair.The state of mind in prose is a lonely, peaceful, and leisurely state of mind, with enough time to recall and think.Good prose always exudes an air of laziness.In my opinion, lying alone on a sunny hillside in winter, or having a fireside chat with friends, are the most suitable situations for the birth of prose.Modern people live too hastily, so there is a lack of good prose in modern times. From poetry to prose to dissertation is evolution, but who knows if it is also a regression?