Preface |
A Contemporary Logos | Sententiae | Art Sentences
PREFACE
It has been long known that the expectations of a reader are more
important for literary experience than are the literary skills of the
writer. If
one finds prose where poetry is expected, the mind of the reader closes
no matter how expressive may be the work in front of him. From Aeschylus
through Joyce, successful creative writers have had to have the wit and
the patience to create the audiences required for appreciation of their
work. Many a brilliantly creative writer has passed into oblivion because
of his incapacity for outlasting the disinterest of a public oriented
in other directions.
The form of writing known as aphoristic is one that requires a special
independence of mind and consciousness of self on the part of the reader.
Unlike prose, aphorisms do not entertain or stimulate by carrying the
reader upon a flowing current of language. They are never didactic or
discursive, they are solely the signals of an interior life within the
writer. Aphorisms must be understood as a form of literary art by which
the artist transforms his experience of living into concise propositions.
Brevity and depth are at the heart of aphoristic expression. If the ultimate
purpose of art is the awakening of consciousness; the impact of the aphorism
is to be found in its ability to penetrate and rouse the mind of a reader.
Heraclitus, the greatest writer of aphorisms in western cultural history,
declared that the purveyor of wisdom does not explicate or conceal but
gives a sign. He was regarded as a literary force second to none throughout
a thousand years of antique culture; subsequently, his impact was lost
on a reading public that no longer wished to read actively. We now live
in a society that looks to literature for diversion, not awakening. Those
with a taste for the classics turn to the literary honey of Plato rather
than the tough meat of Heraclitus. Yet it is as true now as in antique
times that the written word can never expand the self of a reader, it
can only be a reminder of feelings striving for expression. Submersion
in a plethora of written words does not assist in such awakening, rather
it is like entering a hot tub in which the reader’s restless soul
is tranquilized into inactivity.
A superficial reading of aphorism is worse than useless and predisposes
to supercilious or hostile attitudes. An aphorism must resonate with the
interior self of the reader. Searching for meaningful aphorisms is like
diving for pearls, one must give over the entire self to the search, which
is not without an element of danger.
The aphorisms presented below have been culled from my writings with
occasional modifications.
[top] A CONTEMPORARY LOGOS
The transmutation of vital experiences
into concepts is a special form of artistic expression. The ancient
Greeks called it philosophy.
*
Philosophy is not a matter of truth or error but of boldly
expressing one’s consciousness of existence.
*
“Philosophical” refers to the awareness of
the problem of human consciousness that first emerged among the ancient
Greeks and Hindus. The self-contradictory concept of analytic philosophy
exemplifies the corruption of language found in contemporary societies.
*
The Greeks of antiquity knew that just as a bird soars and
a fish swims, the soul of a human being strives to become conscious of
the unseen ordering existence. Heraclitus called this ordering
"the logos."
*
We may define Greek wisdom very simply as a commitment
to the development of the soul. There can be no talk of wisdom without
talk of the soul.
*
“What is a soul?” is a question not to be asked of children
or scientists.
*
It is helpful to understand that ‘mysticism’ is a word often
utilized by individuals who have a limited consciousness of existence.
*
The brain stands to the soul as does a piano to Chopin.
*
It takes very little investigation to discover that an interior self or
soul is the distinguishing mark of Homo sapiens.
*
The ancients quarreled greatly about the nature of the interior self but
it never occurred to them to deny its existence.
*
"Suffering teaches" means that a soul only
painfully emerges out of the chaos and misery of experience.
*
I have never met a little child with a soul.
*
The ancient Greeks are the only models we have of a people oriented toward
interior development. On this is based the perennial fascination with
Greek culture.
*
Activity of the soul occurs on a cosmic plane, not a psychological one
in the modern sense of the latter term. From the cosmic point of view,
the psychologist Freud was remarkable for h is obtuseness.
*
It is impossible to be encumbered with bourgeois cleverness and still
expand the soul. This piece of knowledge was well known to antiquity.
*
Bourgeois do not take the interior self seriously because they have become
infatuated with the lures of possession and science.
*
Christianity ultimately undermines the spirituality of Christians since
the latter are guided by an imaginary God instead of their own real
selves.
*
The newly flowered soul is like a young girl yearning for romantic transport – if it gives itself to the first coarse clod demanding affection,
its future is forever blighted.
*
The monstrous sin of prematurely deflowering souls lies heavily on the
conscience of the Judeo-Christian religions.
*
When the tension between polar opposites slackens, all things fall apart.
Thus the downfall of a human being whose exterior strength is unbalanced
by an interior self.
*
He who does not realize that the soul exists on a different plane than
the body is already captive of the bourgeoisie.
*
It is necessary to know that there is a finite amount of energy available
to humans. What they expend in one activity is not available for another.
One may assume that the technological monuments of contemporary civilization
are a sure sign of spiritual impoverishment.
*
The profound mystery of the relationship between interior selves is at
the bottom of artistic expression and appreciation.
*
As might be expected, the soul is the infallible touchstone of art; devoid
of soul, a human can have no artistic experience of any consequence.
*
The ancients believed that he who has seen the gods must die. They had
not yet discovered that art may provide a reprieve.
*
Contempt is the necessary shield of the soul. During antiquity, giving
up one’s shield represented the ultimate dishonor.
*
The Gospel according to John begins with a straightforward description
of the Heraclitean logos, albeit John would have done better to acknowledge
its origin. The presence of the spirit of Heraclitus in John’s writing
appears to be the principal source of its spiritual qualities.
*
It is difficult for Christians to realize that Saul of Tarsus preached
Greek wisdom – albeit with a Semitic flair for picturesque imagery.
*
I cannot imagine the New Testament originally written in any other language
but ancient Greek.
*
The key to the shameless Christian misuse of Greek thought is the Johannine
conception of human beings as teknia - little children. The soul, however,
overcomes the world through consciousness, not stories for little children.
*
One only loves ideas. When it comes to people, affection is the appropriate
emotion.
*
It is not possible to put new thoughts in the minds of others, it is only
possible to awaken ones incipiently present. Thus sharpness of expression
is next to consciousness in the cosmic scale of human values.
*
Literature may divert or deepen the mind. It is essential to make this
distinction with every form of literary experience.
*
The great danger in human cultural affairs is the entertainment element
concealed in ambiguous verbosity. Thus a Heidegger becomes the foremost
philosopher of the twentieth century.
*
Those who have not experienced the philosophies of other times and other
places are like children who have been locked in a closet.
*
The true artist of any type is conscious of the logos embedded in his
creative work.
*
Expressing oneself for the marketplace is of course a form of prostitution.
However, while the prostitute has only compromised his or her sexual functions,
the literary prostitute has endangered the far more fragile spiritual
self.
*
I have doggedly searched for contemporary culture but have found only
societies of entertainers and scholars. The latter appear to me to
be a special type of voyeur who prefers the safety of gazing at the past.
*
The massive entry of technology into the arts may represent the final
death chant of our deteriorated American culture.
*
The bourgeois is a philistine no matter how he clutters his dwellings
with bric-a-brac.
*
What recourse is there for the honest person but to reject the totality
of what passes for culture in the circuses and salons of the twentieth
century?
*
The poet Friedrich Schiller once said that the success of a writer was
to be judged according to how he affected the great minds of his generation.
But what if…?
*
Of all the literary arts, philosophy should be the one least involved
with literary honey.
*
Ancient Greek consciousness is the one element of the western cultural
heritage that is not ready for the trash can. We still live in a world
that can be wholly divided into Greeks and barbarians.
*
The Greek philosophers knew that poets and other literary types lie. Their
dethroning of Homer was the great event that led to Greek wisdom.
*
The topmost pinnacle of Greek wisdom was reached by Heraclitus of Ephesus
who reported: “You will not find out the limits of the soul though
you may traverse every way, so deep is its logos.”
*
Theophrastus, the Gelehrter of a declining Athens, concluded that Heraclitus
had suffered with melancholy because of his gloomy and obscure way of
writing. Thus began a tradition of evil psychologizing that has persisted
down to this very day.
*
I have long since seen through Plato, that vain Ur-father of the western
literati --
"much knowledge, corrupt artfulness."
*
Western philosophy will be free of a great burden when the works of Plato
have been transferred to their rightful place in the domain of imaginative
writing.
*
Once titans roamed the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Learning their
language allows the mind to deal with our decaying contemporary culture
as if it were training artillery upon armies of medieval knights.
*
Every individual must discover for himself that societies are held together
by a meshwork of lies and half-truths. It is known that Diogenes embraced
the symbol of the dog because of his allegiance to honesty.
*
The philosophers of Athens would have thought the poor of America to be
extravagantly well to do. Real poverty is ignorance. I find it difficult
to imagine what they would have thought of the mental condition of our
bourgeoisie.
*
Technology has its place in human affairs but what we are witnessing today
is an advanced cancerous overgrowth.
*
In our society, the mental disorder characterized by unfruitful fact acquisition
(polymathy) is a greater personal threat than that of overbearing arrogance
(hubris). With the Greeks, the opposite was the case.
*
Classical scholars of Greek are like untutored primitives who have discovered
an internal combustion engine. They may learn to take it apart and put
it together, and even dimly imagine its power, but they do not use
it for its proper purpose.
*
Excessive development of the political instinct leads to death of the
soul in politicians no matter how much promise they show in their early
life.
*
It is beyond my comprehension as to why the ignorant of the world pine
only for the abominations of technology. One would think it to be
quite clear by now that there are no mechanical solutions to the problem
of human existence.
*
Necessary motto for a true democracy – “Every man a metaphysician.”
*
There are two essential events in life: birth and death. There are two
essential activities: vital experience and personal expression. All
the rest fall into the category of trifles.
*
More than race, religion or economics, consciousness separates people.
And that is how it should be.
*
The habitual bourgeois can never leave his snug harbor for the ocean of
consciousness because his vessel is unseaworthy.
*
I can barely contain myself when I hear bourgeois chatter of a “successful
person” – as if it has not been long known that the flowering
of consciousness is the only success that matters.
*
We westerners suffer greatly with not one but two chronic spiritual disorders – religious delusions and a psychotic obsession with technology.
*
The discovery of the unreality of the bourgeois virtues greatly simplifies
our task of becoming conscious of existence. For example, there is the
remarkable success story of Henry David Thoreau.
*
The Upanishads best reveal the depths of eastern philosophy – and
its limitations. What seems to be lacking is awareness of the continual
need of vital experience for development of the soul. Furthermore, there
is the inclination toward what the Greeks called gymnosophistry.
*
The nirvana cults of the East are surely no solution to the problems of
western culture. They proliferate here for the same reason that technologies
proliferate; the western mind has been weakened by two millennia of Christianity.
*
One can neither evade nor bow down to the erotic element in life –
it must be wholly penetrated. In time, one learns that a deepened consciousness
is the final object of the erotic impulse.
*
What is one to say of the homo sapiens who cowardly offers the pleasures
of domesticity or gaming in place of consciousness?
*
Next to hunger, little children are the worst natural enemy of consciousness.
Parenthood exists always at the expense of soul – it is brute nature,
red in fang and claw.
*
That the wise grow in wisdom while fools raise children is clearly a ridiculous
social system.
*
The American way of life – confining one to career, marriage and
the bourgeois family – is the greatest destroyer of soul ever invented
by mankind.
*
Internal emigration is a practice I know well. Even so, the poisons of
bourgeois living have rendered my mind barely viable.
*
This is what I hate: the bourgeois mind, Christianity, cancerous technology.
*
This what I love: the expression of the soul in art.
*
There can be no interior development without the destruction of poisonous
concepts.
*
Philosophical works that fail to destroy poisonous concepts rarely amount
to anything. The huge quantity of useless pablum dished out under the
rubric of philosophy is truly astonishing.
*
Extended literary discourse may usually be regarded as a lullaby without
the music.
*
I write to express myself – subject closed.
*
The ancients knew that social life is a game for children and assumed
the serious part would come in time.
*
Prolonged preoccupation with science and technology damages the soul.
That is why computers are so dangerous for the young.
*
Those who principally orient themselves toward the undeveloped or the
maldeveloped have turned away from their human heritage.
*
I have learned never to trust any person who prays to God when in distress.
They are liable to engage in any form of corrupt behavior.
*
To those who think this writing to be a foolish flight of fancy, gaze
closely at the faithful mirror held to bourgeois life by the television
industry.
*
The ability to tolerate noise and din is inversely proportional to the
depth of one’s soul. Schopenhauer has written a marvelous essay
on this neglected topic.
*
Those who assign consciousness to the brain are same ones who relate the
love of sexes to the need for reproduction.
*
I assert that having been a scientist, I know all to well what it is to
fornicate with witches and prostitutes.
*
Not intellect but passion is the engine of the soul. Blake noted that
to suppress passion is to paralyze the soul. (Still I wish he had read
Greek day and night instead of his Bible,)
*
Alexis de Tocqueville warned that man must be greater than his works (he
was thinking of his observations of America.) The plight of our bourgeois
society is that the works have far outgrown the men. Therefore, either
the men must grow or the works must be torn down. Q.E.D.
*
I am now certain that maturity lies in the progressive intensification
of radical thought.
*
Nietzsche’s brilliant solution for the successful life of a philosopher
was amor fati. Unhappily he could not live up to his genius.
*
The finest epitaph for a philosopher – “I expressed myself!”
[top] SENTENTIAE
In life forms, the energy
of the universe is harnessed so as to further the propagation of the
organism. We sentient creatures, however,
find that our life drive has been mysteriously altered so that consciousness
becomes the principal focus of our existence.
*
Those who do not recognize a human consciousness attuned to the hidden
elements of the universe are better left to their blind dependence
upon animal spirits.
*
The transition from vegetative plant life to motile animal life was surely
easier than the human transition from homo faber to homo sapiens.
*
The ancient Greeks whose philosophy represents the pinnacle of western
culture, developed the crucial awareness of the oneness underlying
plurality - en panta einai. Unfortunately for western civilization, the Greek
idea
was devitalized by projecting the energy of existence into a fictitious
distant entity.
*
Once the hidden aspects of existence are no longer felt to be accessible
to the individual, he loses touch with them and tends to busy himself
with tool making. The domain of consciousness is then preempted by those
who have turned myths into dogmas.
*
Perhaps the most heinous of all human sins is the forgoing of an intellectual
conscience.
*
The problem of existence for humans is the problem of enlarging consciousness.
When they attempt to develop themselves through technological methods,
they are like dinosaurs struggling to survive by adding to their armored
plating.
*
Our predicament in contemporary technological society is the inevitable
result of turning away from consciousness. The significance of human
existence is lost amidst the massed tiers of machinery.
*
Those who wish to be philosophers must first study physics in order to
free themselves of the illusions puffed up in their minds by the technologies
of perception.
*
The deterioration of the mind comes about through failure to realize its
basic purpose. This starkly apparent in the appalling lack of opportunity
for developing the adult mind in American culture.
*
I have never quite understood how lovers of nature can forget that human
thought is its highest product.
*
Discovering the ramifications of the relationship of the living conscious
self to the cosmos is the one pleasure that never palls. This is why
Epicurus founded his pleasure principle upon philosophy. It was left for a
Gelehrter
of the twentieth century to replace philosophy with sexuality.
*
Through absorption in the creative work of others, we borrow from their
sublime experiences. And in creation of art, the debts are paid.
*
Discovery of what lies within the horizons of a philosopher’s mind
is at least as interesting as traversing oceans, mountain or skies.
*
Philosophical creativity is a means of protection from the excesses of
an ignorant society. Without it, we are like children powerless to
defend ourselves against abusive parents.
*
By now, we denizens of the third millennium should be sufficiently aware
of the addictive nature of entertainment and its poisonous effects
upon our minds. But how difficult it is to cure oneself of the sicknesses of
a society.
*
The caveman has disappeared because modern man has developed better constructional
technologies. However, whether one lives in a cave or a house, the yearning
for consciousness still emerges in the human mind and will not be put
off.
*
One sees only vacuousness in the faces of public leaders. They seem to
be without awareness of the soul, they seem to only understand the
greed of the bourgeois mind. Even religious fanaticism comes as a welcome relief.
*
Before family, before country and certainly before any god, there is the
requirement of consciousness of the human condition.
*
True artwork is nothing more than a personal expression by the artist
of his consciousness of existence. Philosophy may be regarded as that
form of literary art in which consciousness emerges in writing. A philosophy
that is not recorded is just a noise in the wind.
*
What is required of all artwork – and certainly of philosophy –
is not to be aesthetic but to be a compelling reminder of the problem
of human existence.
*
Philosophies that do not attend to the problem of existence on a consciousness
level are usually branches of science that are misnamed.
*
The early Greek philosophers were preoccupied with the relationships of
the one to the many. Another way of expressing this is that they believed
every sentient human being must work out his connection to eternity.
*
The Greeks had a strong sense that death was a return of the soul to somewhere.
Before the litterateur Plato, philosophers did not stoop to fables. It
was enough to realize that the recurrent waves of life required an
underlying ocean.
*
Any really intelligent society would have known better than to have left
the heroic pre-Socratic philosophers to the funereal world of academics.
*
Well ahead of Einstein, Heraclitus of Ephesus proclaimed that matter was
a form of energy.
*
We must now turn to Protestant ministers such as Paul Tillich
or the Reverend-Rabbi Martin Buber in order to hear the faint sounds
of Greek awareness of the
interior self.
*
Without the Heraclitean concept of the “logos that is common to
all”, artistic activity becomes merely a pandering to the tastes
of the marketplace.
*
The only miracle I have ever witnessed is the miracle of art in which
conscious beings communicate across time and space.
*
Mere exposure to artwork is of little value. One does not enlarge consciousness
through exposure anymore than one learns to swim by observation. There
must be the total involvement of the upward reaching self.
*
In the past, most western artwork was corrupted by religion. Today, it
is the market that does the dirty work.
*
Not continuity but drastic change is the underlying law of the life energy.
For some reason, however, our society yearns for the boredom of “stability.”
The fear of change has frozen the structures of American society into
superannuated instruments.
*
Anyone who still believes in human progress need only compare the antique
thinkers with our contemporary shamans and Gelehrten.
*
A stern sense of duty toward the hidden interior self
cannot be dispensed with if one is to aspire toward consciousness.
*
In the effort to develop humanity as a whole, the one indispensable tool
is death. Not the least of the superior moral virtues of the antique
philosophers was their acceptance of responsibility for their own demise.
*
The phenomenon of denial of death arises out of excessive preoccupation
with biological survival. How shameful it is to dissipate limited human
energy when there is no hope of enlarging consciousness. But this is the
natural result of disillusionment with two thousand years of Christian
fable-mongering.
*
When one develops an awareness of the energy of life and its setting in
the great pointillistic canvas of eternity, everything becomes much
clearer.
*
Psychic surrender to the spirit of another is no solution to the problem
of existence. There is no way of acquiring consciousness second hand.
*
Regarding chemicals and consciousness, it seems that there are always
those who are content with mere masturbatory experiences. Apparently
no end exists to the messes of pottage for which one can sell his birthright.
*
Independent philosophical activity in the twentieth century requires an
unshakable faith in the universality of the yearning toward consciousness.
*
The end of Homo sapiens will not come through ecological exhaustion but
through the disappearance of its unique life force in anthill societies.
*
We must acknowledge that the Bomb known as Christianity has already exploded
upon the western mind with fateful consequences. This thought drove Nietzsche
mad.
*
There is no real point to philosophical explication. This abnormal use
of the mind demeans the expressive faculty. Perhaps Plato had some
excuse for establishing the class of philosophical literati; today, there is
no longer any reason for continuing the type.
*
In our historically burdened societies, one must carefully investigate
many things in order to develop consciousness.
*
What a ridiculous circumstance it is for a sentient creature to exist
solely to eat, breed and accumulate material possessions!
*
Inherent in the notion of consciousness is its expression. Being buried
alive is child’s play compared to possessing an unexpressed consciousness.
*
Without a deep and full expression of individual consciousness, human
life is just a wrong turn in the evolutionary process.
*
When our society accepts that philosophy is the capstone of human existence,
then we will have reached the level of attainment of the ancient Greeks.
*
To my mind, the monstrosities of technology that appear among humans are
like putrefaction occurring in decaying tissues. I fear that it is
only childlike wishfulness to imagine that our civilization can escape Ananke.
*
Although we cannot conceive of life without death, our shameful society
refuses to develop a dignified means for accomplishing the transition.
*
The contemporary independent philosopher has the problem of continually
speaking to himself as if he were a prisoner in solitary confinement.
*
The exceptional virtue of the critical philosopher Wittgenstein was that
he realized the worthlessness of critical philosophy.
*
I have the same sort of weakness for Plato’s Gorgias that I have
for the film High Noon. The triumph of the hero over the badmen still
makes me tremble with pleasure. One would have thought I might have by
now outgrown such story book nonsense.
*
In our too old culture, we are saddles with the task of penetrating the
encrusted layers of the centuries to arrive at the springs of sentient
life. The effort required is often beyond the limits of psychic strength.
*
The near suffocative effect of polylanguage upon vital thought is exemplified
in the philosophers who emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century – one may mention Bergson, Berdyaev and the forgotten Rudolph Eucken.
In our time, however, the vital thought has disappeared completely and
we are left only with scholars.
*
All serious writers must come to grips with the real meaning of a decadent
culture.
*
Any thought can be expressed in a few sentences at the most. Extended
prose works are too often akin to the demonstrations of idiot savants – the public entertainment of audiences through mental gymnastics.
*
Writing to indulge oneself is the only writing that is really educative
to others.
*
The dirty little secret of higher education is that there is no such thing;
there is only higher learning. And by now, it should be abundantly clear
that this does not occur in universities.
*
The dichotomy in human endeavor is not between art and science but art
and survival.
*
We cannot form a picture in our minds of eternity or of the transcendental
life force. Yet we know both are there, mocking our illusions of societal
power.
*
The philosopher Heraclitus is unequalled for pregnant expression. Consider
his remark, “Let us not lightly accede on the most important matters.”
*
Revolutionaries are merely philosophers who have lost faith in their culture.
But in the human condition, consciousness takes precedence over the cycles
of action and reaction.
*
Aesthetic accomplishment represents fulfillment for the artisan while
it is quite irrelevant to the artist.
*
The wisdom of the artist is the realization that it is better to trust
the Moirae than to submit to a superannuated society.
*
The bourgeois want money and the Christians preach love but we artists
seek only consciousness of the hidden energies of existence.
*
Until there is some sense of the excesses of literary rhetoric and its
debauching effects, we are fated to continue to witness the intellectual
decline of our society.
*
Extended prose works are like great murals; wide panoramas may be seen
but focus and depth are lost. One cannot imagine Rembrandt as a muralist.
It is no accident that murals chiefly emerge from the surface world of
religious or politically minded artists.
*
Writing extended prose works may be viewed as a form of pollution of the
environment. They should not be allowed to leave the home of the writer.
An ecology of literature is undoubtedly one of the prime requisites for
a cleansing of western culture.
*
Lesson for philosophers: no concept should require more than three sentences
to communicate.
*
Plato and Heraclitus represent the opposing principles confronting all
philosophers: literary rhetoric versus literary compression, entertaining
fiction versus demanding reality, litterateurism versus directness.
*
Literary explication is invariably a manifestation of the author’s
desire to dominate his readers through his learning and force of mind.
But this has nothing to do with expressive art.
*
Not generals or politicians, but philosophers like Plato, St. Paul and
himself were what Nietzsche had in mind when he expounded on the will
to power.
*
The tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche is that of a mighty engine over which
control was lost. He understood German culture but it drove him insane
anyway.
*
Arthur Schopenhauer was perhaps the last philosopher of the west who really
had a feeling for metaphysics. For his insight that reality was will and
not representation, we must forgive Schopenhauer his insatiable need
to overwhelm his readers.
*
We must additionally be grateful to Schopenhauer for making it quite clear
that it is the energy of the mind, not its content, which is immortal.
*
The reader of an extended prose work ought to remember he may have immersed
himself in a poisonous haze that is recognizable only from a great distance.
*
Philosophical artwork is indirect, metaphorical, assertive and veiled.
The reader is confronted with the high-energy product of the artist’s
mind working in concepts. Scientific description is exactly the opposite;
it is explicit, concrete, neutral and straightforward. For the philosopher,
such a style has no value whatever and produces nausea when paraded out
as philosophy.
*
The most important idea: it is not necessary to follow our predecessors
like cattle.
*
The time will come when the integrity of philosophers is judged in the
way Socrates judged the Sophists – do they make money from their
work?
*
The difficulties of modern literary artists began with the capital outlays
of Gutenberg.
*
The habit of reading prose fiction is like the habit of the tavern. Who
is not attracted by the pleasure of transport out of self? But reality
is a relentless presence and when the problem of existence is ignored,
the interior self gradually dissolves.
*
Prose is now manufactured like automobiles using assembly line methods.
*
I suppose if our society cannot prohibit alcohol, it cannot prohibit fiction.
Some limits can be set, however. There is an area in which we must admit
Plato had certain valuable ideas.
*
What is important to know about travel is that it is liberating but not
fulfilling.
*
Caritas is an essential element in the human experience. And what gift
is more valuable to the recipient than the artwork of a sentient human?
*
For Sophocles, the ultimate hubris was the consciousness of truth attained
by his great heroes and heroines – Ajax, Antigone, Deineira, Oedipus.
Since Sophocles did not perceive the role of creative art in life, he
could only have recourse to their tragic deaths.
*
There is a great difference between creating artwork and manufacturing
merchandise. The artist cannot simultaneously serve both art and commerce;
if he does not reject the one or the other, he will in the end reject
himself.
*
When we see an artist accepting rewards for his products, we are entitled
to become suspicious. It is impossible to distinguish between “commercial
artists” – a contradiction in terms – and commercial
“artists.”
*
If the Jews would have permitted, Pilate might well have offered Jesus
a monthly stipend.
*
One reason there is such an attraction to the work of dead artists, writers
and philosophers is that they are beyond the reach of filthy lucre. Even
the greediest of bourgeois has some sense of the sacred quality of
art and instinctively prefers to avoid colluding in the corruption of its
creator.
*
In a moment of personal bitterness, Goethe acknowledged that the public
destroys in its artists what it most wants from them. Learning from
his experience, it is absolutely essential that a genuine artist have nothing
to do with the public at large.
*
Of the commercial dealers in artwork, we can only say that they neither
give nor permit others to receive what is given.
*
Entering into the psychology of the gift-giver is necessary for the individual
who turns his conscious energies into artwork. What else can he do with
his creations?
*
For we humans, the problem of existence is very different from the problem
of survival.
*
Like a dog sniffing drugs, I never miss the unmistakable stench of profit
rising up from commercial artwork.
*
The odor of profit emanating from artwork is more alarming than the growth
of tubercle bacilli in a sputum culture.
*
The minute writers begin giving seminars and forming institutes, it is
all over with their creative life.
*
When I feel the need for understanding twentieth culture, I turn to the
Dada manifestoes.
*
There is something distinctly pathological about the sedentary habit of
reading prose fiction for entertainment. One is reminded of the brain-damaged
person banging his head for crude pleasure.
*
One virtue of aphorisms is that they do not divert the reader from the
problem of existence. Thus the hostility often directed toward them.
*
It is astonishing how the distinction is still not made between developing
the mind and acquiring knowledge. One would quickly be confined if he
exhibited signs of starvation while hoarding great quantities of foodstuffs.
*
For the philosopher, language is no pleasure vehicle. It is a mule carrying
gold.
*
Few writings today are justifiable. If we do not soon cultivate an asceticism
of written language, only the solution of Wittgenstein will remain to
us.
*
“Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt
Umfass euch mit der Liebes holden Schranken
Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt
Befestigt mit dauernden Gedanken!”
(The Lord addressing Man in Goethe’s Faust)
The lyrical spirit dwelling in the poet’s breast was clearly a great
philosopher who defies adequate translation.
*
We artist-philosophers must grow to realize that consciousness is a subjective
energy, not an objective condition. One is either receiving or expressing
consciousness, there is nothing in between except the monotony of biological
activities.
*
Regarding penetrating the universe, one inspired metaphor is worth ten
thousand photographs.
*
We should be elevated not intimidated by our perceptions of the enormities
of time and distance. After all, we are their creators and we possess
our eternal place in the metaphysical universe.
*
Just as it is best to consume the least quantity of food that will maintain
health, so it is best to use the least amount of language that will convey
meaning. Extravagance with language, like any other vice, inevitably
weakens the writer.
*
What is one to make of those who exploit their families, their friends
or their emotions for the sake of public attention?
*
Poets do not lie nor do they tell the truth, they advance the language.
*
The health of a society may be judged by the austerity of its language.
*
For the unconscious and the unfulfilled, society has invented the glorious
pleasures of success.
*
The bitter truth is that once one has sold his soul to the merchants of
success, there is no turning back. One can only attempt ignominious
flight.
*
My advice to the creative personality is to seek out individuals and avoid
the public.
*
Once an artist is recognized by society, his real work is finished. That
is why posthumous success is always better for all concerned.
*
To rid oneself of the addiction to fame is like purging a tapeworm fastened
deep within the bowels.
*
Tragic awareness is not incompatible with high spirits. The figure of
Diogenes of Sinope rather than that of Sophocles exemplifies the healthiest
development of the antique Greek mind.
*
Every country needs an Artemesium in which philosophical artwork can be
made secure.
*
It has been said that one must always shoulder the burden of culture and
history – but never before acquiring consciousness.
*
I regard my life as fundamentally an adventure in consciousness.
[top]
ART SENTENCES
Gradually, one realizes it is exhilarating
to be creative in the midst of a deteriorated culture.
*
Since the art of language has always had a sacred quality to me, I refuse
to contaminate it with the ordinary effluvia of my mind.
*
Like a newborn child, artwork must be brought into the world and protected
against the elements. What happens afterwards is not the artist’s
business.
*
It is better to leave revolutions to the bourgeois as in the case of the
founding of America. The soul, however, emerges from personal rebellion
not revolution against the state.
*
For we still hopeful, still youthful moderns, Nietzsche at Basle remains
a guiding star.
*
“Les intellectuales maudites” of the nineteenth century: Hölderlin,
Stirner, Baudelaire, Poe, Rimbaud, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Nietzsche –
all dead or insane by their fifties. Subsequently, silence, except for
the scribbling of academics.
*
Idiot savants are now, quite appropriately, professionally referred to
as “savants”. The former term was tautological.
*
The plastic and poetic arts today only provide amusement for children.
It seems clear that there is nothing further to be expected from them.
*
Anyone wanting to understand contemporary American society need only refer
to Baudelaire’s Pauvre Belgique…”Le paganisme des imbeciles.”
*
When I look at people, I usually see only mouths and fingers.
*
Saintliness is consciousness without contempt.
*
Historical progression in art is the development of better forms to illumine
human feelings. However, one cannot forget about retrogression.
*
The national publishing scene: Exhibition Of The Successful
*
Unraveling the energy of existence is what art has always been all about.
*
Critical thinking is no solution to the object-bound consciousness. What
is needed is a subject-bound consciousness, which is to say, the mind
oriented toward art.
*
Our current nightmare of materiality can only be combated by an opposing
development of the interior self. The task of art is to stimulate this
development which is why the idea has always been the most potent art
object.
*
Experiences of depersonalized perceptions are merely calisthenics for
the senses.
*
Response to Protagoras – not “man,” only “I”
am the measure of all things.
*
The tremendous sense of the cosmic self possessed by early Greek philosophers
did not survive the rise of the Roman Empire. Then life became a matter
of psychic survival …as it is today.
*
Since all dogmas are dead and scientific technology is leading us to disaster,
the hope for our society lies in the elevation of ideas to the dignity
of the art object.
*
The only higher experiences I know are erotic life and artistic expression.
The rest are tasteless icings.
*
“Bourgeois” may be defined as a person who has sold himself
to society – usually at far too high a price for value obtained.
*
Learning to acquire wealth is like learning to speak a foreign language,
it is a knack one hopes will be useful.
*
Before a person dies, he should make at least one pilgrimage even if it
is to nowhere.
*
One must deal with the desire for fame as one deals with an insane passion;
wait until the feeling passes.
*
Christianity
is a bone chewed by starved dogs
Higher
education refers to learning ancient Greek
Fame
is the last refuge of the literati
The
scholar is the hyena figure of philosophy
If
you wish to love me, love my thoughts
*
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, now is the time to
change it”. This sentence reveals Karl Marx’s arch betrayal
of philosophy of which the consequences are yet to be fully realized by
the world.
*
The individual who has not yet apprehended E. A. Poe’s judgement
that societies are directed by gangs of thugs is either mentally limited
or afraid to see the truth.
*
I refuse to pander to the current addiction to imagery. I would
rather purvey public sex. At least there is none of the absurd masquerade
of culture.
*
The error of the recent conceptual art movement was to believe that ideas
can be read in objects. In fact, most western art has come to grief
on this peculiar notion. The ancient Hebrews knew better when they banned
imagery.
*
I believe art of the future will shun symbols and images. The striving
will be strictly for expression of the ideas upon which human worth
is based.
*
Because he painted his thoughts, Nietzsche has come down to posterity
as a literary stylist. Heraclitus would have had him beaten with the
poet’s
staff along with Homer and Archilochus.
*
The continuous smile is the pathognomonic sign of bourgeois dementia.
No blood test is necessary.
*
Executing sentences protects me from the cardinal sin of writers –
garrulousness.
*
I have set myself firmly against a career as a clown. But it is difficult
for me to discern any other kind of activity in the current circuses
of the arts. Meanwhile, my mind has been riven in two by a gigantic bolt
called bourgeois life.
*
It is the mind, not the eye or the ear, which is the receptive organ for
the arts.
*
New forms of art are needed when the old ones have degenerated into entertainment.
*
“The arts languish now because all their scope is exhibition; when
they originated, it was to serve the gods.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals
However, the origin of the art of philosophy in Greece was to serve the
philosopher and his disciples.
*
“To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the single important
thing.”
Baudelaire, Mon Coeur Mis A Nu
Amen
*
If love is the most overindulged emotion, gratitude is the one most in
need of cultivation.
*
My ideas are the best part of me. All the rest is hardly worth mentioning.
But I have noticed it is the same with everyone else.
*
I dismiss any type of art that caters either to my senses or my emotions.
For such things, nature is preferable.
*
In our world, which is drowning in fatuous imagery, it is imperative to
realize that ideas, not images, are the natural focus of the developed
mind.
*
Interest in the art object is essentially a facet of interest in the artist.
Otherwise, it is the same old worship problem mentioned in Exodus 20:4-5.
*
My principal rule for an artist – allow no one to judge the value
of your art; allow him only to respond positively or negatively.
*
I am fortunate that no critic or merchant has intruded into my work. Most
writers are not so lucky.
*
The forms of language are better suited for the expression of the mind
than are the forms of objects.
*
Religion is not opium for the people, it is usually cyanide laced with
honey.
*
Soren Kierkegaard, a brilliant philosopher, was poisoned by his parent,
a common Christian practice.
*
Still, religions are significant because they embody a powerful idea that
has taken root in the society. But how long can one live upon the capital
of the past?
*
It has been said that over the portals of our time stands not the Gnothi
Seauton but a Verwerte Dich!
*
Only what one’s life symbolizes is meaningful – other symbols
are generally false or trivial.
*
I have found that the cultures of the past are my principal resource for
dealing with the poisons of the present. Impatiently, I advise my fellow
bourgeois to lift their head out of the poison trough so that they can
see something.
*
If you don’t agree or don’t understand, wait a while... something
may happen.
*
"In the beginning there was the Word" means that linguistic expression is our key to the primal
energy underlying reality.
[top]
|