The Art Of Art
The art of art,
the glory of expression
and the sunshine of the light of letters
is simplicity.
Nothing is better than simplicity…
nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness.
To carry on the heave of impulse and to pierce intellectual depths
and give all subjects their articulations
are powers neither common nor very uncommon.
But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude
and insouciance of the movements of animals
and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods
and grass by the roadside
is the flawless triumph of art…
The greatest poet has less a marked style
and is more the channel of thoughts and things
without increase or diminution,
and is the free channel of himself.
–excerpt Leaves Of Grass, Introducton by Walt Whitman p. XXX
Whitman might be a 19th century visitation of Lao Tsu, the 6th century BCE, semi-legendary Old Master of China. Whitman’s words have the tenor of the Tao Te-Ching. The point of any work of excellence is that it represents a source that becomes legendary in our minds. Has not the conception of Jesus become a legend and are not attempts to excavate the historical Jesus a misunderstanding of the entire point, a mis-direction? Certainly. Down-to-earth truth is to be touched, tasted, embraced within the universal insight of the Sermon On The Mount, or through the verses of the Tao Te-Ching. The myth, the legend is the lens that transforms. If we let it.
Nothing is better than simplicity.
