And I guess I'm out. Though I would like to continue to post bits from the book I am currently into.
From Women in Love, Birkin, who probably closest resembles Lawrence himself, talking to Gerald:
'...every true artist is the salvation of every other.'
'I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.'
'Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in.'
[Project Gutenberg, an on-line eBook, url to the page where this passage begins.]
'I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.'
'Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in.'
[Project Gutenberg, an on-line eBook, url to the page where this passage begins.]
These few lines [in Chapter 16] sparked something. I am immersed in thinking about the 'gift economy' (as an parallel system to Capitalism, or what Capitalism is founded on rather), about the artist's life, the struggle to live, what has to be sacrificed for art, and why art continues when society seems in nearly every way to wish to abolish it by ignoring most of their artists' need for decent livelihood.
And in this economic predicament, yes, "every true artist is the salvation of every other." And they do get on "badly"? Surely!
But it is the last line, "only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in," that had the wow factor. I feel Lawrence himself is doing this for me, even as I walk up and down the streets and across the parks with my dog listening to Women in Love on audiobook.
And, you see, Venus, Botticelli's Venus, does create a vision of beauty that makes the world fit to live in.
from the VirtualUffizi
Sorry to be so sketchy. But I shall have to give up the NaPoWriMo effort as my muse is veiled, absent.
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