"I'm saying that through genuine culture man can know himself, even in nations where his identity is denied."
"But what do you mean by genuine culture?"
"The beautiful and true! In music, in poetry, in literature, even in novels without political or historical references, we can apprehend what is not immediately known through rational thought or the accumulation of objective facts."
"Antun, you're investing too much faith in culture. Does culture have the power to liberate man from overwhelming historical forces?"
"Culture is the last refuge, the sanctuary, the human place in the midst of the surrounding dehumanization. Through the arts man is able to know himself, even if only on the intuitive level. He senses his own worth, even when he cannot articulate it."
"Can a poem or a song defeat a tyrant?"
Defeat a killer, defeat atrocities, defeat the bottom falling out of the universe when you least expect it?
"Yes. Yes, it can, given enough time. When a work of art is both beautiful and true, man's freedom is strengthened by it-both his interior need for freedom and his capacity to seek a rational understanding of it."
-Island of the World, Michael O'Brien
There'll be more from this book to come.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
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