Any work contains, more or less, a central intention and a lot of unconscious meanings, of unenhanced virtues but ready to be realized, it carries with it, repressed or only half expressed, so many meanings that come from the subconscious of the artist, unforeseen and for him...
A work is always much richer than its creator thinks or wants. It includes, without his will, possibilities of associations, suggestions, mental exercises other than those he indicated. She has affinities that bind beyond the creator's original will; hidden meanings that he doesn't even suspect...
If the work of art contained only one idea, it would die quickly, i.e. with the disappearance of the author, who would bury his conception with him... On the contrary, a creation is all the more valid the more subtexts it brings , more unconscious virtualities, more secondary wills other than the unique one of the doer and, up to a point, opposed to it.
Pushing things to their paradoxical aspect, we could say that a work lives mainly through what the artist did not want, through the elements he did not highlight. Opera lives somewhat against him...
The extension of unsuspected meanings that give life and posterity to art is made by the public with its imagination. He credits the author with his original idea. Various meanings he hadn't thought of…
The artist is one individual and the audience is humanity. He always generalizes and enriches the work of art. It makes it valid, interesting for as many people as possible, always pointing out new meanings, aspects and intentions. Thus he humanizes it by collaborating with the author. He gives us a pattern and we complete it, he gives us a vessel that we fill and empty from generation to generation.
If a work of art, viewed as an individual phenomenon, is dependent on a certain personality, from which it cannot be dissociated, in the same way art, as a collective phenomenon, cannot be separated from the other functions of the group. A society, in this case a nation, these are the natural societies in which we live, has a certain soul structure. It is individually colored by certain tones. A society is defined by the group of values it believes in and which constitute it as ideal or cultural.
The work of art appears to us as a necessary compromise between the manifestation of the specific and its realization under social pressure, in a limited society, that is, in a nation... When we introduce the national specific, we do nothing but complete the definition of talent.
Art is nothing more than a means of expressing one's personality. The latter is the entire reality of man, art is only its instrument of communication.
The great artists remain great national figures, and the works of art that prevailed were the national ones...
Only through art can we get out of ourselves, can we know what another sees in this universe that is not the same as ours and whose views would have remained as unknown to us as those that probably exist on the moon.
Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, ours, we see it multiplying, and as many original artists there are, we have as many worlds at our disposal, more distinct from each other than those that roll into infinity and which, at many centuries after the fire from which they emanated was extinguished, whether they are called Rembrandt or Ver Meer, they send us their special light.
Poetry is not metaphysical. It is, first and foremost, song. And, being the youth of the world, she sings the oldest realities of the world, the tree, the bird, the cloud, the stars. It is the natural extension of an instinct... Poetry is not only the quintessence of literature, it is first of all, a way of living, of existing, a way that can be cultivated, but which is initially spontaneous.
Poetic "knowledge" is only given through and in poetic "experience" - here lies, among other things, one of the differences between poetic and mystical - because the poet creates, makes an object whose matter is language, this intention to make being the principle that directs and unifies its forces.
The artist, instead of imitating nature, assimilates it to embody it in his own self.
Art represents the ability given to man to separate a form from the swirling chaos of his sensations, and to contemplate this form in its uniqueness.
Art is what determines in the most direct way that the being lasts by establishing itself in something present, that is, in the work of art. For this reason, art must always be revolutionary, for in our existential situation we cannot remain inactive (inactivity in this sense is a death in life).
We constantly struggle with appearances and against the nothingness that is death. We are always threatened by spiritual and mental disintegration, the prelude to physical disintegration and death, and art represents the effort to resist disintegration, to regain our being from outer confusion.
If the aesthetic experience is removed, the very vital link between man and his social environment is removed, the harmony and joy of existence is destroyed.
The tribute you pay to the artist is the tribute to a man who has proven himself able to solve your own emotional problems for you through his special qualities.
If we are superior to animals, if our spirit can be intoxicated with the idea of glory, and so rise above the horror of nothingness, it is because we possess the gift of making images, that luminous replica of all poetic and philosophical works. But we possess this gift only to the extent that all of us, according to our powers and capacities, are in direct contact with the development and form of the visible world.
Art is not an abstraction; it is a human activity, carried out only through the mediation of a personality. The quality of this personality will overwhelm the abstract qualities of art, and the value of art depends on the depth of human feeling.
For me art - I say "art" and I always think only of literature - means creation of people and life...
It is not beauty, a human invention, that interests art, but the pulsation of life. When you have managed to put into words a few moments of real life, you have done a work more precious than all the phrases in the world...
Creating life does not mean copying existing individuals by nature. Such realism or naturalism is less valuable than a bad photograph...
Literary creation can only be synthesis. The man I am painting will have and must have similarities with thousands of people, as all people have in life, but he lives only by what he has unique and different from all people of all times.
Art is not meant to moralize man, obviously, but it can make him rejoice because he is human and because he lives, and even make him more human.
Literature, in whatever form it appears, means not only a painting, but also an interpretation and therefore in a way a more or less direct criticism of the world and the society in which the writer lives.
By creating living people, with their own life, with their own world, the writer approaches the mystery of eternity.
Sincerity is the chief quality of the true writer. Sincerity to oneself, from which springs sincerity to art. If you do not give yourself entirely to art, in the moment of creation, you will only create lifeless monsters.