What Of Art?
A group of us came together last night to find language to express our feelings, and our musings in response to a work of art. The piece was unveiled at the inception of our conversation. To supply a sparkle of delight, to ensure that we’d not slip into an all-too-serious mode, a bottle of fine Scotch was introduced. Those who desired partook. Thus we were joined in the room by the Scots, and the smoky peat of their land.
The focus of our discussion was The Flammarion Engraving by an unknown artist which appeared in in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (“The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology”). The woodblock engraving is of much older subject matter. 1888 is really not that long ago, the time of my great grandfather.
The discussion reflected the sensibility of each of the seated individuals in our circle. We are of the 20th and now the 21st century. What are we to make of a depiction of a late renaissance scene? A male individual, possibly in a Monks habit has found and made a rent in the seam which separates the dome of the starry heavens, and the edge of the earth. He is part way through and appears to triumphantly point to the subsidiary mechanism that orders the planets in their courses…..
That is what we observe of the engraved image, to the extent that we ascribed meaning to the elements of the work before us. We will never know the name of the creator, and only have a limited insight into Camille Flammarion’s purpose for including the image in his book.
Perhaps he was captured, felt the same wonder, heard the same voices as did we in the room while viewing the engraving.
To conclude, some quotations from Nietzsche which I read this morning:
7. My wisdom has accumulated long like a cloud,
it becomes stiller and darker.
So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightning.—
To these men of today
will I not be light, nor be called light. Them—will I blind:
the lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!8. Do not will anything beyond your powers….
Do not become a false-coiner, and a stage player.
At last becoming false to yourselves, squint-eyed…
glossed over with strong words, parade virtues,
and brilliant false deeds.
Nothing is more precious and rare
than honesty.
Is not today the day of the populace?
“The people” do not know the difference
between what is great and what is small,
between what is straight and what is honest;
The people are innocently crooked,
ever lying.15. The higher an aspiration
the more often failure.
All who reach…
have you not all been failures?
But cheer up, — does it matter?
How much is still possible!
Learn to laugh at yourself,
as you ought to laugh.
You wonder that you have failed,
that you have half succeeded,
you half-shattered ones?
Does not the future of humanity
strive and struggle in you?
Oh how much is still possible!
—excerpt Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche,
No.73 The Higher Man p. 279-282
