On a personal level, too, art is life intensified: it delights more deeply, consumes more rapidly; it engraves the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventure on the countenance of its servant and in the long run, for all the monastic calm of his eternal existence, leads to self-indulgence, over-refinement, lethargy, and a restless curiosity that a lifetime of wild passions and pleasures could scarcely engender.
– Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
Brilliant. Simply an amazing description and series of insights.
art is all that and more
one I’ve been liking lately:
“If one’s existance has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book. We can all of us judge the truth of this, for hardly any of us manage to avoid some periods when the main theme of our lives is obscured by details, when we involve ourselves with persons who are insufficiently characterized…”-Rebecca West