Artistic Fancy

Just as every big building has its foundations deep in the earth, so, too, does the structure of human culture on which construction work was done by the millennia. In these dark chambers of the soul are the powers of imagination that once governed all mankind, the titanic family of old wishes and old dreams. When they break out of the depth, they emerge as architectural structures, paintings, poetry and music.

—From Beethoven to Shostakovich: The Psychology of the Composing Process, Max Graf

Philosophical Library, New York (1947)

Wagner

Before [I reached this stage] I had to master the skill of musical expression, much as one learns a language. But now I had thoroughly learnt the language of music; I had mastered it like a true mother tongue; and so I no longer needed to concern myself over formalities of expression in that which I had set forth: [expression] stood at my command wholly as I required it, to communicate a particular view or sensation from inner necessity. [...] From what has been said, the content of that which must be expressed by the word and tone poet becomes self-evident: it is the purely human, released from all convention.

—Richard Wagner, Drei Operndichtungen nebst einer Mittheilung an seine Freunde

tr. William Ashton Ellis

Müller and Schubert

"Ich träumt' in seinem Schatten
So manchen süßen Traum."

—Der Lindenbaum, Wilhelm Müller

from Winterreise, music by Schubert (D911)

Aristotle on "acquiring by doing"

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.

—Ethics, Aristotle (1105b)

tr. David Ross, Oxford (2009)

Mirall trencat

No es queixava mai de la seva vida perquè, segons a quines hores, a tres passos del cavallet, sentia una escalfor al cor i una mena de bogeria al cervell que res del món no hauria pogut donar-li fora de la seva feina. Des del seu colomar, tot mirant l'estesa de terrats plens de roba blanca que la marinada feia¹ gronxar, pensava que no s'hauria volgut canviar amb ningú.

—Mirall trencat, Mercè Rodoreda (XIII)

Obres completes vol. 3, edicions62 (1984)

But how happy is a just man?

"Then if one turns it around and says how far the king is removed from the tyrant in truth of pleasure, he will find at the end of the multiplication that he lives 729 times more pleasantly, while the tyrant lives more disagreeably by the same distance."

—The Republic, Plato (Book IX, 587e)

tr. Allan Bloom, Basic Books (2016)

Nabokov on drafts

An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying canceled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the result counts.

—Introduction to Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (pp. 15), tr. Nabokov 1964

Plato on Philosophy

"Then, as it seems, this wouldn't be the twirling of a shell but the turning of a soul around from a day that is like night to the true day; it is that ascent to what is which we shall truly affirm to be philosophy."

—The Republic, Plato (Book VII, 521c)

tr. Allan Bloom, Basic Books (2016)

Russell's got it right

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.

—Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (1935)