Thursday, November 19, 2009
"Beauty plus pity — that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual."
--From “The Metamorphosis,” an essay in Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov
"Longing is painful. Every work of art is an attempt to bring into being the object of loss. The pictures, the music, the poems, and the performances are an intense engagement with loss. While one is in the act of making, one is not in loss, and one has meaning. The fierce crashes that happen to many creative people when a piece of work is done (read Hemingway on this) come out of the sense that however good the work, it has not answered the loss."
--Jeanette Winterson, "In Praise of the Crack-Up," The Wall Street Journal, 10/17-18/2009