Lots of things can be shared
If art teaches anything – to the artist, in the first place – it is the privateness of the human condition. Being the most ancient as well as the most literal form of private enterprise, it fosters in a man, knowingly or unwittingly, a sense of his uniqueness, of individuality, of seperateness – thus turning him from a social animal into an autonomous ‘I.’ Lots of things can be shared: a bed, a piece of bread, convictions, a mistress, but not a poem by, say Rainer Maria Rilke. A work of art, of literature especially, and a poem in particular, addresses a man tête-à-tête, entering with him into – free of any go-betweens – relations.
Joseph Brodsky, On Grief and Reason, 46.
[x]#573 fan woensdag 26 mei 2004 @ 23:58:54
