“…talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.”
On War (1832), Book 2
“His genius operates in that world of antithesis where the conflict between ideal and reality rages”
Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)
Context: Caravaggio speaks to us out of a consciousness that is brooding and obsessive, and affects us in a way that is not simply artistic. By this I mean that he comes close to presenting us with a sensation of amorphous and desperate desire unredeemed by an authoritative vision. It can be felt in the apprehensive boredom of the unsuccessful pictures and in the oppressive intensity of the best. If this sensation were deep enough it might have destructive effects, since we all live within that margin of order which we succeed in imposing on life, i. e., on the unfulfilled longings of the heart, and his work might then be truly diabolic. His genius operates in that world of antithesis where the conflict between ideal and reality rages, and the moral victory, i. e., the ultimate affirmation of the goodness of life, is always so tenuously won that we feel the dread of chaos intensely- even when he is completely successful. If there could be such a contradictory phenomenon as the uninnocent artist he might be it. He indicates the sort of sensations we might expect from such a monster. But since he is wholly innocent beneath the apparent evidence of corruption he ends by moving us in a profound and religious way.
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Patrick Swift 60
British artist 1927–1983Related quotes
“The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."”
Richard Feynman
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volume III; lecture 18, "Angular Momentum"; section 18-3, "The annihilation of positronium"; p. 18-9
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
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C.G. Jung
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 51.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace
Context: The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
(1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy