If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.
Robert BrowningRead
Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the perpetual struggle of human creativity and the feeling of incompleteness that often accompanies artistic endeavors.
Robert Browning's quote highlights the inherent challenge in the pursuit of artistry, suggesting that no artistic endeavor can ever be fully realized or complete. It captures the notion that artists are haunted by the sense that their creations are never truly finished, a reflection of the deeper struggle and aspiration that defines the artistic process.
In practice
In a discussion about the creative process during an art workshop.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.
Tis Man's to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason.
I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds_x000D_ _x000D_ All the world's loves in its unworldliness.
I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.
How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In lifeβs November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, Oβer a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!
How good is life, the mere living!
Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.
May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Are artists the canaries in the mine, warning of the coming explosion before anyone else? It's hard to look at the world before 1914 and not wonder if they somehow felt a catastrophe was bearing down on them and their societies.
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
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