Wat is kunst? - de blik in haar ogen dat is kunst - Was ist Kunst?

How strangely things turn out to be sometimes. While I was still lamenting a great loss, exactly this loss resulted in me unexpectedly getting an answer to a question I had been posing to Raimund Stecker - in fact the very person, who made me first aware of the problem. Raimund mentioned that to his mind there are basically two kinds of art, first at all the art that is concerned with art history, wanting to enhance it somehow, and then there is art that is authentic. Since I never ever believed in progress, lol, I was very anxious to find out about authenticity. How and when are you authentic? I certainly did pose the question to Raimund, but never got an answer.

Yet a year ago, having one of my paintings in his hands and  noticing that I was more than upset to learn that one of my drawings got lost in the mail, M P stated to somebody else  - translating my feelings to her - that I can never ever do the drawing again. Now I know what authentic implies and I'm more than grateful to him for letting me know.

Sanftmut - Gentleness - Lightness II

What a procession:

Chekhov is sitting at his desk, neatly and unhurriedly he jots something on a piece of paper. Then he gets up, puts on his overcoat, his hat and galoshes, and goes to the corner where a mousetrap has been placed. He comes back, holding a mouse, still alive, by its tail, and goes out on the porch and walks slowly across his garden to the fence, behind which stands a Tartar cementary on a stony hillock. Gently he throws the mouse over the fence ... A tame stork and two small dogs are following behind him.

Ivan Bunin in On Chekhov

And something very contemporary, though being a century old, and at the heart quite deconstructivist :-):

Im übrigen ist Humor eben Humor und hat jederzeit seinen eigenen Sinn und - Ernst für sich. Ja, es ist seine Mission, zumindest heutzutage, im Menschen den dumpfen trübseligen Ernst, in den ihn eine materialistische Gegenwart verstrickt hält, ein wenig aufzulockern, anzubröckeln.

Von einer Zeit umfangen, die im wesentlichen von Gelehrten ihre Parolen empfängt und demgemäß auf allen Seiten zur Sackgasse verurteilt ist, meint er (i e der gegenwärtige Mensch Anmerkung moi) vor solchen Versen gleichsam aufzuatmen, als in einer Atmosphäre, in der die erdrückende Schwere und Schwerfälligkeit des sogenannten physischen Plans, der heute mit dem ganzen bitteren Ernst einer geist- und gottlos gewordenen Epoche als die alleinige und alleinseligmachende Wirklichkeit dekretiert wird, heiter behoben, durchbrochen, ja mitunter völlig auf den Kopf gestellt zu sein scheint

Christian Morgenstern in Brief Fragmente aus Über die Galgenlieder von Christian Morgenstern

Finally the lyrics of one of the most beautiful Flemish songs ever:

Mia by Gorky or Gorki


When I was hungry, I came to you.
You said: "You may eat if you do the washing up"
 People like you must have a hard time.
Give them a chance before they grow silent/ crazy.

The middle class governs the country
better than ever before.
Mia has seen the light.
She says: "Nobody is lost."

Momentarily we still go ahead
on the bright path, the wrong track
People like me you meet everywhere
on the job market in this valley of tears

Stars may come and stars may go
Only Elvis remains
Mia has never quit
She asks: " Can you still dream?"

The middle class governs the country
better than ever before.
Mia has seen the light.
She says: "Nobody is lost."



Stars may come and stars may go
Only Elvis remains
Mia has never quit
She asks: " Can you still dream?"



Stars may come and stars may go
Only Elvis remains
Mia has never quit
She asks: " Can you still dream?"

Rav Josef weinte* / And the Rabbi Wept

                                                   ...  But , alack,
You snatch some hence for little faults; that's love,
To have them fall no more: you some permit
To second ills with ills, each elder worse,
And make them dread it, to the doer's thrift

* cf Emmanuel Levinas, Die Schäden, die das Feuer verursacht in Vom Sakralen zum Heiligen, Fünf neue Talmud-Lesungen

Sanftmut - Gentleness - Lightness

In his series of lectures at the Havard University about issues most likely to become prominent in the third millenium (which he was spitefully denied to fully accomplish),  Italo Calvino talks about Lightness as being one of these issues/ memos, dedicating a whole lecture to it. He goes to point out how already at the end of the twentieth century airiness and volatileness have become important to some artists - for further reading Calvino's lectures have been published entitled Six Memos For The Next Millenium.

Of late I've been reminded of this lecture after watching a new film version of  Das blaue Licht / The Blue Light / Het blauwe licht , which rather stresses the gentle and dreamlike light aspects of this story even converting some of its elements to better fit this issue. Lightness and gentleness, especially when it also applied to environmental issues, which are very important to Calvino as well, go very well together. Thus this adaption proved to be very up to date.

 

The circle closes again when one realises that Calvino has also published a most delightful compilation of fairy tales.

C'est Belge or Surreal Circumstances

In addition to yesterday's post and especially to the family celebration in Belgium. It was during this celebration on a Sunday afternoon in spring that I noticed a helicopter flying very low above the garden we were celebrating in, one could almost distinguish the pilot. In the evening we learned from the news that prisoners had escaped that very afternoon from a nearby prison by kidnapping a helicopter. This stunt was repeated btw a few years later in Belgium ...

Lotharingien or "Wo verläuft die Bildungsgrenze in Deutschland?" :-)

Now Belgium has set the world record of being without a government, maybe it is about time to start considering alternatives...

Once while riding from Münster to Düsseldorf I put forward a question to Raimund Stecker, that an acquaitance had made up during a game of Trivial Pursuit. So in jest I asked Raimund: "Wo verläuft die Bildungsgrenze in Deutschland?" (Where is the borderline of learning in Germany situated?) and I also gave the alleged answer : "Linksrheinisch" (left the river Rhine). Though to me this was only a silly joke, Raimund took this seriously and stated that  he considered people living left the Rhine being far better educated than in the rest of Germany and he added that he even had a girlfriend from Aachen once.

Going back in history, there appears a country, a dream on the map, Lotharingien, the realm of Emperor Lothar/ Lothair, the land inbetween rivers Rhine and Maas, neither French nor German, but rather both. And what a surprise that once while watching TV I learned that Sebastian Haffner had been sharing the same dream, when he was considering post-war Germany after and during WW2.

Btw once there was also the question was raised what language there was spoken in Belgium. Before I could utter any word, a woman, whom I knew for a frequent visitor to Aachen, said: "Belgian." LOL!! How wonderful it is to sit at a table during a family celebration near Eupen in Belgium, and everybody is speaking his respective language, i e  French, German and Flemish/Dutch, and everybody is understanding everybody...

Wisdom from Books

I wonder who this "mein lieber Hans-Günther" is or was, who got twenty years of age in December 1943 and whose Aunt Kläre was living in Kiel, for this is the dedication I found in a copy of "König Heinrich IV.- Erster Teil" ( King Henry IV - Part I). In fact I'm wishing him good luck still for the years of his life he had yet to come, for there were also parts of the text marked and it was mainly those parts, where Falstaff would be commenting on his view of honour - a highly dangerous view to hold in Germany at the time -, but also one that eventually would have helped this Hans-Günther to survive (if he had managed to keep it to himself).