July 2012
17 posts
“The love of books. My library is an archive of longings.”
—As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks (1964-1980) by Susan Sontag
“Two kinds of writers. Those who think this life is all there is, and want to describe everything: the fall, the battle, the accouchement, the horse-race. That is, Tolstoy. And those who think this life is a kind of testing-ground (for what we don’t know — to see how much pleasure + pain we can bear or what pleasure + pain are?) and want to describe only the essentials. That is, Dostoyevsky. The two alternatives. How can one write like T. after D.? The task is to be as good as D. — as serious spiritually, + then go on from there.”
—As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks (1964-1980) by Susan Sontag
“‘All art aspires to the condition of music’ — this utterly nihilistic statement rests at the foundation of every moving camera style in the history of the medium. But it is a cliché, a 19th c[entury] cliché, less an aesthetic than a projection of an exhausted state of mind, less a world view than a world weariness, less a statement of vital forms than an expression of sterile decadence. There is quite another pov [point of view] about what ‘all art aspires to’ — that was Goethe’s, who put the primary art, the most aristocratic one, + the one art that cannot be made by the plebes but only gaped at w[ith] awe, + that art is architecture. Really great directors have this sense of architecture in their work — always expressive of immense line of energy, unstable + vital conduits of force.”
—As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks (1964-1980) by Susan Sontag
“Greatest subject: self seeking to transcend itself (Middlemarch, War and Peace). Looking for self-transcendence (or metamorphosis) — the cloud of unknowing that allows perfect expressiveness (a secular myth for this).”
—As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks (1964-1980) by Susan Sontag
