Truth and Art

"But how does the artist secure himself against the corruptions of his time, which everywhere encircle him? By disdaining its opinion. Let him look upwards to his own dignity and to Law, not downwards to fortune and to everyday needs. Free alike from the futile activity which would gladly set its mark upon the fleeting moment and from the impatient spirit of extravagance which applies the measure of the Absolute to the sorry production of Time, let him resign the sphere of the actual to the intellect, whose home it is; but let him strive, through the union of the possible with the necessary, to produce the Ideal.

Let him stamp it on illusion and truth, coin it in the play of his imagination and in the gravity of his actions, in every sensuous and spiritual form, and quietly launch it into infinite Time."


From the Ninth Letter of On the Aesthetic Education of Man

This excerpt is a good example of why I hold Schiller in great regard. His poetic and philosophical tendencies live simultaneously in his phrases. This harmony is exactly what he espouses in this classic work; that is, the reconciliation and unification of the sensuous and intellectual through Art, through Beauty.

Since it is so relevant to what I do, I'll be quoting from it in the next few posts.