On art and beauty
No matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat; another poor fellow is turned into a beetle — so what?
There is no rational answer to so what. We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss.
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.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lecture on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
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GOD. I wish I could have known him!
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attend his lecture!
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fictionalhistories reblogged this from homeofthevain and added:
right word? I’m tempted...go with “the poignant”…
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