The artist ought to believe in art and rely upon art, and live in it, for in the palace of the soul are many mansions, and his is not the least capacious nor the least permanent, whilst we are all aware that it is certainly not the least beautiful.
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Thoughts About Art
Unknown, she was my favorite shape,
She who relieved me of the worry of being a man,
And I see her and I lose her and I suffer
My pain, like a little sunlight in cold water.
Paul Éluard
I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star….alas! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself. behold! i shall show you the Last Man. ‘what is love? what is creation? what is longing? what is a star?’ thus asks the Last Man and blinks….’we have discovered Happiness,’ say the Last Men and blink.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus a naive optimism had led people to glorify science, or rather the techniques of mastering the problems of life based on science, as the road to happiness. but after Nietzsche’s annihilating criticism of those “last men” “who have discovered happiness,” i can probably ignore this completely. after all, who believes it–apart from some overgrown children in their professorial chairs or editorial offices?
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
Release from the rationalism and intellectualism of science is the fundamental premise of life in communion with the divine.
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
What did science mean to these people on the threshold of modernity? for artistic experimenters like Leonardo and musical innovators of the sixteenth century, it meant the path to true art, and for them this meant the path to true nature.
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
A work of art that truly achieves ‘fulfillment’ will never be surpassed; it will never grow old. the individual can assess its significance for himself personally in different ways. but no one will ever be able to say that a work that achieves genuine ‘fulfillment’ in an artistic sense has been ‘superseded’ by another work that likewise achieves ‘fulfillment.’
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
In the absence of this strange intoxication that outsiders greet with a pitying smile, without this passion, this conviction that ‘millennia had to pass before you were born, and millennia more must wait in silence’ to see if your conjecture will be confirmed–without this you do not possess this vocation for science and should turn your hand to something else. For nothing has any value for a human being as a human being unless he can pursue it with passion.
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
This is what had happened: Van Gogh went back to the house and immediately cut off his ear, very close to his head. It must have taken him some time to stanch the flow of blood, for next day a number of wet towels lay on the stone floor of the two ground-floor rooms. The blood had soiled both rooms and the little stairway which led up to our bedroom. When he was well enough to go out, with a Basque beret pulled way down over his head, he went straight to a house where, if you can’t find a girl from your hometown, you can at least find someone to talk to, and he gave his ear, carefully washed, and sealed in an envelope, to the man on duty. “Here,” he said, “in remembrance of me.” Then he fled, went home and to bed, and fell asleep; but first he took the trouble of closing the shutters and placing a lighted lamp on a table near the window.
Within ten minutes the whole street reserved for prostitutes was in an uproar and people gossiped about what had happened.
I was far from suspecting any of this when I reached the doorstep of our house, and the man in the bowler hat said to me point-blank and very harshly: “Well, sir, what have you done to your comrade?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“But you do . . . you know perfectly well . . . he is dead.”
I would not wish such an instant on anyone, and it took me several minutes before I could think and overcome the pounding of my heart.
I was choking with anger, indignation, and pain, and also the shame of all those people’s eyes tearing into me. I stammered, “Very well, sir, let us go upstairs and discuss it up there.”
Vincent lay curled up in bed, completely covered by the sheet, and appeared lifeless. Gently, very gently I touched his body; its warmth assured me he was alive. I felt as if all my intelligence and energy had been given a new lease on life.
In a near-whisper I said to the chief of police; “Sir, kindly wake this man up as carefully as you know how, and if he asks for me, tell him I’ve left for Paris; the sight of me could be fatal to him.”
I must say that from that moment on, the chief of police was as polite as could be and wise enough to send for a doctor and a carriage.
As soon as he was awake, Vincent inquired after his comrade, asked for his pipe and tobacco, and even thought of asking for the box that was downstairs and contained our money. Doubtless, he suspected me-I who was already armed against all suffering!
Vincent was taken to the hospital and there his mind immediately began to wander again. All the rest is already known to people who can be interested by it and there would be no point in discussing it but for the extreme suffering of a man in a madhouse who regained his reason every month enough to understand his condition and, in a frenzy, paint those admirable pictures of his.
The last letter I received was written from Auvers, near Pontoise. He told me he had hoped to be sufficiently cured to come and join me in Brittany, but that today he was forced to recognize that a cure was impossible. “Dear Master” (the only time he ever used that word), “it is more worthy, after having known you and caused you some sorrow, to die in a sound state of mind than in a degrading state.”
And he shot himself in the belly, and it was not until several hours later that, lying in his bed and smoking his pipe, he died, with his mind fully alert, with love for his art, without hatred for mankind.
Paul Gauguin, Excerpt from Avant et Apres
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era – -the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.
And that, I think, was the handle – -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas