ET: Almanac

Professional historians are apt to dismiss contemptuously as "novels" all historical works which are not merely impersonal, laborious collections of material. But after one or two generations at most their own works turn out to be novels, the sole difference being that theirs are empty, boring, uninspired, and liable to be killed by a single "find"; whereas a truly worthy history-novel can never become a "back number" as regards its deeper significance. Herodotus is not a back number, although he recorded for the most part things which every elementary schoolmaster can refute; Montesquieu is not a back number, although his writings are full of palpable errors; Herder is not a back number, although he put forward historical opinions which today are considered amateurish; Winckelmann is not a back number, although his interpretation of Classical Greece was one great misconception; Burckhardt is not a back number, although Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, the present-day pope of Classical philology, has said that his cultural history of Greece "so far as science is concerned has no existence." The point is that even if everything which these men taught should prove erroneous, one truth would always remain and could never become antiquated: the truth as regards the artistic personality behind the work, the important person who experienced these wrong impressions, reflected, and gave form to them. When Schiller writes ten pages of vivid German prose on an episode in the Thirty Years' War which bears no resemblance to what really happened, he does more for historical knowledge than a hundred pages of "reflections based on the latest documents," written without a philosophical outlook and in barbarous German. When Carlyle works up the story of the French Revolution into the drama of a whole people, forced onward by powerful forces and counterforces to fulfil its bloody destiny, he may be said to have written a novel - even a "thriller" - but the mysterious atmosphere of infinite significance in which this poetical work is bathed acts as a magic insulating sheath to preserve it intact from age to age. Then, again, is not Dante's unreal vision of Hell the most competent historical picture of the Middle Ages which we possess to this day? Homer, too, what was he but a historian "with insufficient knowledge of sources"? All the same, he is and always will be right, even though one day it should transpire that no Troy ever existed. 

All our utterances about the past refer equally to ourselves. We can never speak of and never know anything except ourselves. But by sinking ourselves in the past we discover new possibilities of our own ego, enlarge the frontiers of our consciousness, and undergo new if wholly subjective experiences. Therein lies the value and the aim of all historical study. 

- Egon Friedell, Cultural History of the Modern Age

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ET Almanac

1.

My independence, self-sufficiency, or even frivolous impudence, my taking potshots at everyone, universal provocation and exclusive reliance on myself – all of this was a result of my social and geographical situation. I was forced not to pay attention to anyone because no one paid any attention to me – I was formed in almost complete isolation – then I was crushed by the war – then I was put on the censor's index by the Communist regime – and here, in Argentina, I was deprived of even a literary cafe, of even a group of artist friends in whose bosom every gypsy, innovator, and avant-gardist can curl up in the cities of Europe. I became bold because I had absolutely nothing to lose; neither honors, nor earnings, nor friends. I had to find myself anew and rely only on myself, because I could rely on no one else. My form is my solitude.

2.

To be nature or against it? The thought that man is contradictory to nature, something beyond and in opposition to it, will soon cease being an elitist thought. It will reach even the peasants. It will penetrate the entire human race from top to bottom. What then? When the last reserves of "naturalness" deriving from the lower strata exhaust themselves?

Yesterday evening a neighbor, Tadeusz Czerwinski, came to visit and right off began to tell us something, but we were not listening closely and his narrative took shape very slowly . . . Dus's hounds (we finally understood him to say) had run into Garanio's field and attacked a sow. Garanio had jumped out with a shotgun, killed one of the hounds and wounded another – the rest escaped. I am giving only the crux of the narration, which was rich in branches, like a tree.

Dus ran out onto the porch with a flashlight, and the golden hounds, as usual, rose at seeing him and surrounded him. But there were only five--Step and one young hound, by Saeta, were missing.

Thirteen year old Andrea burst into tears. Dus's rancor – rising like the song of Isolde – prevailed over all else. He would have exchanged his most beloved horses for Step. He had a desperate face – and this was a face that was strangely weakened, like the face of a small child — weakened perhaps by the pettiness of that despair, on account of a mere dog . . . for which he could not demand full recognition from us.

He took a revolver out of a drawer — got on a horse — and a gallop bore him away into the nice. We waited, disturbed and helpess in the face of the anger that vanished into the fields, carried off by a horse. Would he kill Garanio for killing the dog? No, it didn’t end that badly. Dus, upon arriving at Garanio’s estancia and seeing Garanio’s dogs, wanted to shoot them — but the estanciero came running out and bgan asking his forgiveness, explaining that he had acted in defense of a sow, whom the dogs would have torn to pieces. So the anger left poor Dus and only sorrow for his most faithful dog remained: Why did you do this to me? He asked. I have always been a good neighbor. He left. He began searching for the bodies in the night. He found them. It turned out that Step was still alive. Hidden in the bushes, he was dying. He was brought home on that strange sleigh that one uses here on the ground as one might elsewhere on snow.

Dus, Jacek Debicki, Miss Jeanne, and I went to the stable — there was the dog, gasping and shaking spasmodically. Council: cut short his agony? His suffering was terrifying — and he was locked in it, inaccessible to us, separate, alone.

The scene that disturbed me: night, the stable, all of us practically in the dark hovering over an unleashed, diabolical pain. We were capable of putting an end to this . . . . It would have been enough to shoot. Would we shoot? We, four human beings “from another world” a higher world, four demons from antinature, four antidogs. The only thing that joined us to this creature was our understanding of its pain—we knew the taste.

Should we put an end to the torment? A vote. But this demands a more detailed narrative.

The first antidog, Miss Jeanne. Handsome, twenty years old multi-millionaire parents, herself shuttled from Paris to Rome, from Rome to London to the States, on ships, airplanes, first-rate schools, luxurious institutes, always different, out of which she has gotten nothing except the five languages she wields like a native. Which language does she think in? Lxurious — and a Communis—because luxurious—from the excess, the surfeit . . . . Sober, energetic, spunky — modern and an atheist. Seeing her bent over the dog, I realized Communist justice, just like Catholic justice, does not include animals. Within this doctrine humanity ends with man. It forbids the exploitation of animals. Which is, let us add, incomprehensible. It is not all well and good. For if religion casts animals into the margin, as soulless, then materialism acknowledges no basic difference between this suffering matter and human mater . . . . How then will Miss Jeanne act toward the suffering dog — if her reasoned morality has nothing to say? What will she do?

She made a female of herself! Strange . . . in a wink, she undressed herself . . . not so much of her communism, but of her humanity. She suddenly changed into a female – she took refuge in her sex . . . what a sudden eruption of gender into the realm of pain, as if gender could cope somehow with the pain . . . . She became a female, that is, love, that is, pity. She bent over the dog with a mother’s tenderness. It is possible that as a female she could do more than as a human being? Or did she retreat into her sex in order to escape her own humanity?

When she became a woman, however, death seemed worse than pain to her. She began to love the dog cruelly — demanding his life even at the price of his pain. – No, no — she said, trembling. – Don’t kill him!

The second antidog from a higher human sphere, Jacek Debicki. A zealous Catholic. Yet his Catholicism is as useless here as Miss Jeanne’s communism. Nor is God a factor. There is no salvation for the dog. And hence my impression that in leaning over the dog, he was leaning away from God – he is now “face to face” with the dog and therefore not “face to face” with God. An entirely different register of existence. He is “with the dog” as if, giving up his immortal soul, he put himself on its level, identified with it in its suffering. And out of the blue an animal — rebellious and blasphemous—terror of pain mounts in him. But what do I see? I see (because I almost saw this, rather, I “knew” this) that in another register he is not getting rid of even an iota of his Roman Catholic dignity, and the terror changes into pity . . . a legalized . . . civilized . . . well brought up . . . ah, I almost forgot that God, himself ruthless to animals, allows man to pity them — so he is allowed; he even has the “approval” of the Church! But the humanity that he rediscovered in himself is not a fraternal socializing with the animal but with his own humanity, that is, with his feeling of the dog’s pain from on high — from the distance of that soul — and, what’s more, he again possesses an element of nonchalance and cruelty. The decision he makes will be dictated by three considerations: first of all, by his animal compassion, which is almost wild, spontaneous; second, by his more human and spiritualized calculation that the soulless life of a dog is not of great significance; and third (a thought even more spiritual), that one should end this ordeal — which is somewhat embarrassing to God and the soul — as soon as possible.

Kill him — he said. – He won’t make it.

The third antidog. Me. For me, there is no higher authority. Even the dog doesn’t exist. Only a piece of suffering matter writhing before me. Unbearable. I cannot stand it. Gripped by the suffering in this stable, I demand that an end be put to it. Kill him! Kill him! Stop the machine of pain! Let this not be! There is nothing else one can do, just this! But this we can do!

The fourth antidog Dus. Agronomist, landowner, a hunter, sportsman, horseman, and lover of hounds. Between him and us — a complete disharmony; he is from a different reality. He is not afraid of pain “as such,” as I am. He does not seek universal justice, like this Catholic or that Communist. He disregards abstractions, does not grasp them, does not want to. He exists among creatures of flesh and blood, he is a creature among creatures, a body among bodies. In the depths of his spirit, he does not know what equality is. He is the master. He has come to love this dog; therefore, he would, without a scruple, sentence forty million ants and ten thousand whales to suffer . . . if it would bring relief to the dog. For this creature close to him, he is ready for any sacrifice but he does not want to know everything, identify with everything, he wants to remain within the circle of his own limited feeling. He would rather not see what is beyond his gaze. And he has come to love the dog with the love of a master. He loves the dog because it adores him — he loves the canine adoration in the dog. Therefore, the egoism of the master and ruler, the aristocratic feeling born of a ruthless human superiority, all of nature exists for him, it serves him, he, subordinating to himself all inferior beings, is the dispenser of favors. And he seemed to me to the be the most “anti” of all of us – in that dark stable, leaning over the dog, the absolute king of creation, proclaiming, everything exists for me.

But perhaps this is the most consistent with nature. And if the dog could understand, he would understand him, not us!

With the delicacy of a griefstricken mother, he said: Let us wait. Perhaps he won’t die.

It is a fierce love that prolongs agony in order to save the dog – for itself.

This dramatic scene would not have been so tense and urgent if not for the wheezing of the dog, his eyes following our every move.

3.

I met an Austrian at Pocz Oddone’s. An architect. He clamors for urban planning and rationally aesthetic, functional interiors, etc. I told him that people had more important concerns than aesthetics. I also said that an excessively subtle sense of beauty can get us into deep trouble! To explain to the average member of the middle class that his mirrored dresser, commode, and little curtains are frippery would make life altogether repugnant to him. We, in our poverty, could use a more universal skill – the discovery of beauty in everything, even in frippery.

He didn’t understand me. Conceited. European. Didactic. Educated. Modern. Architect.

Witold Gombrowicz - Diary 

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ET: Almanac

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves…

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his religion, his race or his holy cause…

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business

This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national, and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat…

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowing selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless…

Eric Hoffer - The True Believer

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ET: Almanac

La Lupa by Giovanni Verga:

She was tall, and thin; but she had the firm vigorous bosom of a brown woman, though she was no longer young. Her face was pale, as though she had the malaria always on her, and in her pallor two great dark eyes, and fresh, red lips, that seemed to eat you.

In the village they called her la Lupa, because she had never had enough—of anything. The women crossed themselves when they saw her go by, alone like a roving sh-dog, with that ranging, suspicious motion of a hungry wolf. She bled their sons and their husbands dry in a twinkling, with those red lips of hers, and she had merely to look at them with her great evil eyes, to have them running after her skirts, even if they’d been kneeling at the alter of Saint Agrippina. Fortunately, la Lupa never entered the church, neither at Easter nor at Christmas, nor to hear Mass, nor to confess.—Fra Angiolino, of Santa Maria di Jesu, who had been a true servant of God, had lost his soul because of her.

Maricchia, poor thing, was a good girl and a nice girl, and she wept in secret because she was la Lupa’s daughter, and nobody would take her in marriage, although she had her marriage-chest full of linen and her piece of fertile land in the sun, as good as any other girl in the village.

Then one day la Lupafell in love with a handsome lad who’d just come back from serving as a soldier, and was cutting the hay alongside her in the closes belonging to the lawyer: but really what you’d call folling in love, feeling your body burn under your stuff bodice, and suffering, when you stared into his eyes, the thirst that you suffer in the hot hours of June, away in the burning plains. But he went on mowing quietly, with his nose bent over his swath, and he said to her: “Why, what’s wrong with you, Mrs. Pina?”—In the immense fields, where only the grasshoppers crackled into flight, when the sun beat down like lead, la Lupa gathered armful after armful together, tied sheaf after sheaf, without ever wearying, without straightening her back for a moment, without putting her lips to the flask, so that she could keep at Nanni’s heels, as he mowed and mowed, and asked her from time to time: “Why, what do you want, Mrs. Pina?”

One evening she told him, while the men were dozing in the stackyard, tired from the long day, and the dogs were howling away in the vast, dark, open country: “You! I want you! Thou’rt handsome as the day, and sweet as honey to me. I want thee, lad!”

“Ah! I’d rather have your daughter, who’s a filly,” replied Nanni, laughing.

la Lupa clutched her hands in her hair, and tore her temples, without saying a word, and went away, and was seen no more in the yard. But in October she saw Nanni again, when they were getting the oil out of the olives, because he worked next to her house, and the screeching of the oil press didn’t let her sleep at night.

“Take the sack of olives,” she said to her daughter, “and come with me.”

Nanni was throwing the olives under the millstone with the shovel, in the dark chamber like a cave, where the olives were ground and pressed, and he kept shouting Ohee!To the mule, so it shouldn’t stop.

“Do you want my daughter Maricchia?” Mrs. Pina asked him.

“What are you giving your daughter Maricchia?” replied Nanni.

“She has what her father left, and I’ll give her my house into the bargain; it’s enough for me if you’ll leave me a corner in the kitchen, where I can spread myself on a bit of a straw mattress to sleep on.”

“All right! If it’s like that, we can talk about it at Christmas,” said Nanni.

Nanni was all greasy and grimy with the oil and the olives set to ferment, and Maricchia didn’t want him at any price; but her mother seized her by the hair, at home in front of the fireplace, and said to her between her teeth:

“If thou doesn’t take him, I’ll lay thee out!”

La Lupa was almost ill, and the folks were saying that the devil turns hermit when he gets old. She no longer went roving around; she no longer sat in the doorway, with those eyes of one possessed. Her son-in-law, when she fixed on him those eyes of hers, would start laughing, and draw out from his breast the bit of Madonna’s dress, to cross himself. Maricchia stayed at home nursing the children, and her mother went to the fields, to work with the men, just like a man, weeding, hoeing, tending the cattle, pruning the vines, whether in the north-east wind or the east winds of January, or in the hot, stifling African wind of August, when the mules let their heads hang in dead weight, and the men slept face downwards under the wall, on the north side. Between vesper bell and the night-bell’s sound, when no good woman goes roving round, Mrs. Pina was the only soul to be seen wandering through the countryside, on the ever-burning stones of the little roads, through the parched stubble of the immense fields, which lost themselves in the sultry haze of the distance, far off, far off, towards misty Etna, where the sky weighed down upon the horizon, in the afternoon heat.

“Wake up!” said la Lupa to Nanni, who was asleep in the ditch, under the dusty hedge, with his arms round his head. “Wake up! I’ve brought thee some wine to cool thy throat.”

Nanni opened his eyes wide like a disturbed child, half-awake, seeing her erect above him, pale, with her arrogant bosom, and her eyes black as coals, and he stretched out his hand gropingly, to keep her off.

“No! No good woman goes roving round between vespers and night,” sobbed Nanni, pressing his face down again in the dry grass of the ditch-bottom, away from her, clutching his hair with his hands. “Go away! Go away! Don’t you come into the stackyard again!”

She did indeed go away, la Lupa, but fastening up again the coils of her superb black hair, staring straight in front of her, as she stepped over the hot stubble, with eyes black as coals.

And she came back into the stackyard time and again, and Nanni no longer said anything; and when she was late coming, in the hour between between evensong and night, he went to the top of the white, deserted little road to look for her, with sweat on his forehead;--and afterwards, he clutched his hair in his hand, and repeated the same thing every time: “Go away! Go away! Don’t you come into the stackyard again!”

Maricchia wept night and day; and she glared at her mother with eyes that burnedwith tears and jealousy; like a young she-wolf herself now, when she saw her coming in from the fields every time silent and pallid.

“Vile woman!” she said to her. “Vile, vile mother!”

“Be quiet”

“Thief! Thief that you are!”

“Be quiet!”

“I’ll go to the Sergeant, I will.”

“Then go!”

And she did go, finally, with her child in her arms, went fearless and without shedding a tear, like a madwoman, because now she also was in love with that husband of hers, whom they’d forced her to accept, greasy and grimy from the olives set to ferment.

The Sergeant went for Nanni, and threatened him with gaol and the gallows. Nanni began to sob and to tear his hair; he denied nothing, he didn’t try to excuse himself.—“It’s the temptation,” he said “It’s the temptation of hell!” and he threw himself at the feet of the Sergeant, begging to be sent to gaol.

“For pity’s sake, Sergeant, get me out of this hell! Have me hung, or send me to prison; but don’t let me see her again, never, never!”

“No!” replied la Lupato the Sergeant. “I kept myself a corner in the kitchen, to sleep in, when I gave her my house for her dowry. The house is mind. I won’t be turned out.”

A little while later, Nanni got a kick in the chest from a mule, and was likely to die; but the parish priest wouldn’t bring the Host to him, unless la Lupa left the house. La Lupa departed, and then her son-in-law could prepare himself to depart also, like a good Christian; he confessed and took the communion with such evident signs of repentance and contrition that all the neighbours and the busybodies wept round the bed of the dying man.

And better for him if he had died that time, before the devil came back to tempt him and get a grip on his body and his soul, when he was well.

“Leave me alone!” he said to la Lupa. “For God’s sake leave me in peace! I’ve been face to face with death. Poor Maricchia is only driven wild. Now all the place knows about it. If I never see you again it’s better for you and for me.”

And he would have liked to tear his eyes out so as not to see again those eyes of la Lupa, which, when they fixed themselves upon his, made him lose both body and soul. He didn’t know what to do, to get free from the spell she put on him. He paid for Masses for the souls in Purgatory, and he went for help to the priest and to the Sergeant. At Easter he went to confession, and he publicly performed the penance of crawling on his belly and licking the stones of the sacred threshold before the church for a length of six feet.

After that, when la Lupa came back to tempt him:

“Hark here!” he said. “Don’t you come again into the stackyard; because if you keep on coming after me, as sure as God’s above I’ll kill you.”

“Kill me, then” replied la Lupa. “It doesn’t matter to me; I’m not going to live without thee.”

He, when he perceived her in the distance, amid the fields of green young wheat, he left off hoeing the vines, and went to take the axe from the elm-tree. La Lupa saw him advancing towards her, pale and wild-eyed, with the axe glittering in the sun, but she did not hesitate in her step, nor lower her eyes, but kept on her way to meet him, with her hands full of red poppies, and consuming him with her black eyes.

“Ah! Curse your soul!” stammered Nanni.

- Translated by D. H. Lawrence

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ET: Almanac

Upon meeting the young painter Eichler at the Grodzickis', I said: I don't believe in painting! (To musicians I say, I don't believe in music!) Then I found out from Zygmunt Grocholski that Eichler asked him if I make up these paradoxes for the hell of it. They can't imagine how much truth there is in them, truth that is probably truer than the truths that nourish their slavish "attachment" to art.

Yesterday I went to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes with N.N., after submitting to his pleas. The excess of paintings exhausted me even before I began to look at them. We would walk from room to room, stop at one of the paintings, then move on to another painting. Of course, my companion exhaled "simlicity" and "naturalness" (that secondary naturalness that is a victory over artificiality) and, in keeping with the obligatory savoir-vivre, he avoided anything that could be construed as exaggerated. I belched an apathy that gleamed with revulsion, animosity, revolt, anger, and absurdity.

There were ten other people besides ourselves who walked up, looked, then walked away. The mechanical quality of their movements, their muteness, gave them the appearance of marionettes and their faces were non-existent compared to the faces that peered out of the canvas. This is not the first time that the face of art has irritated me by extinguishing the faces of the living. Who visits museums? A painter, more often a student from a school of fine arts or a pupil from high school, a woman who does not know what to do with her time, a few art lovers, people who have come from afar and are visiting the city. Other than these types there was practically no one else even though everyone would swear on their knees that Titian or Rembrandt are wonders that make their spines tingle.

This absence does not surprise me. Large, empty rooms hung with canvases are repugnant and capable of casting one into pits of depression. Paintings are not meant to be hung next to one another on a bare wall, a painting is meant to adorn an interior and to be the joy of those who live with it. Here in the museum, the paintings are crowded, the amount crowds the quality, masterpieces counted in the dozens stop being masterpieces. Who can look closely at a Murillo when the Tiepolo next to it demands attention and thirty other paintings further down shout: look at us! There exists an unbearable, degrading contrast between the intention of each o these works of art, which wants to be the only and exclusive one, and hanging the paintings all together in this room. Yet art, not just painting, is full of such marginal clashes, absurdities, uglinesses, and stupidities which we cast outside of the mainstream of our feelnigs. An old tenor in the role of the young Siegfried does not jar us, nor do frescoes we can't see, a Venus with a broken nose, or an old lady declaiming young poems. 

I, however, am less and less inclined to divide my sensivtivity into compartments and I do not want to close my eyes to the absurdities that accompany art but are not art. I demand of art not only that it be good art, but also that it be well rooted in life. I do not want to tolerate its too silly temples or its too ridiculous prayers... If these are the masterpieces that are to fill us with admiration, why then do we feel afraid, uncertain and why do our emotions wander blindly? Before we fall on our knees before a masterpiece, we wonder whether this is supposed to be a masterpiece. We ask shyly if this is supposed to astound us. We ask ourselves diligently if we are allowed to experience these heavenly raptures, after whcih we surrender ourselves to admiration. How are we to reconcile this supposedly striking, irresistible, spontaneous, and obvious power of art with the indecisiveness of our reaction? Every step of the way arise amusing gaffes, terrible mishaps, and fatal mistakes which unmask all the falseness of our language. The facts challenge our lies every time. Why is this original worth ten million and its copy (even though it is so perfect that it makes the identical artistic impression) worth only ten thousand? Why is there a pious crowd that gathers before the original, but no one admires the copy? That painting supplied divine emotions as long as it was considered to be a "work of Leonardo" but today no one will look at it, because a paint analysis has shown that it is the work of an apprentice. That back by Gauguin is a masterpiece, but in order to evaluate this masterpiece one must be familiar with technique, have the entire history of painting in one's head, and have a specialized taste. By what right then do those who have no preparation admire him? If (and this is what I said to my companion after we left the museum) instead of analyzing paint, we would subject the reactions of the viewer to a more precise, empirical examination, we would uncover an unlimited falseness that would bring all the Parthenons crashing to the ground and explode the Sistine Chapel with our shame.

He looked at me askance. He understood that he was experiencing a crisis of confidence. My reasoning sounded simplistic not because, in his understanding, I was not right, but, first of all, because this was not the language of a person from "good artistic society" and because neither Malraux, nor Cocteau, nor any other of the people whom he respected would have expressed himself this way. This was a collection of concepts that they had long outgrown. Yes, this was a "lower sphere," something really beneath them. No one should not speak of art in this tone! I knew what flashed across his mind: that I am a Pole, that is, a more primitive creature. Yet at the same time I was the author of books which he considered "European," therefore, perhaps it was not Slavic primitivism issuing from my lips but perhaps I was making fun of him by making a nut out of myself? He said: You are saying that just to rile me.

Rile! If your stupidity riles me then allow me to rile you! Why don't you want to see that sophistication not only does not exclude simplicity but should and must go hand in hand with it? If a person who complicates himself cannot also simplify himself at the same time, then he loses his inner resistance to the forces that he has awakened in himself and that will destroy him. Even if there were nothing morein my words than a desire to submit to art, while maintaining sovereignty in the face of it, then this ought to be applauded. This is a healthy policy for an artist. Yet other, profounder reasons were crouching within me, about which he knew nothing. I could have said to him:

You think that I am naive, but it is you who are naive. You have no idea what is happening inside of you when you look at a painting. You think that you are getting close to art voluntarily, enticed by its beauty, that this intimacy is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom and that delight is being born in you spontaneously, lured by the divine rod of Beauty. In truth, a hand has grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, led you to this painting and has thrown you to your knees. A will mightier than your own told you to attempt to experience the appropriate emotions. Whose hand and whose will? That hand is not the hand of a single man, the will is collective, born in an interhuman dimension, quite alien to you. So you do not admire at all, you merely try to admire.

I could have said all this and a lot more, but I restrained mysel. All of this must remain stifled within me. How does one lend this thought the right weight, how does one build it up and organize it into a more elaborate work, if my time is that of a minor clerk and not respected by anyone. Should I speak out of the side of my mouth? Should I allude to a truth that is impossible to elicit in its entirety? I had to remain unconfessed, fragmentary, and helpless in the face of an absurdity that distorted me. And not just me. 

He says: I admire. I say: You are trying to admire. A slight difference, yet on this slight difference is built a mountain of devout lies. It is in this deceitful school that style is formed. Not just artistic style, but the style of thinking and feeling of the elite which comes here in order to perfect its sensitivity and achieve a sureness of form.

--Witold Gombrowicz - Diaries

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ET: Almanac

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

- John Adams


“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”


Thomas Jefferson


So much for founder's intent. Read many more quotes of this nature here

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