Posted on: July 22, 2008
The Shepherds of Arcadia, by Nicolas Poussin. 1630s.
When a society is wealthy, it takes on new responsibilities. New possibilities and opportunities open up for it. It has the potential to increase its own wealth and well-being many times over, if it just thinks ahead of itself and its own instant gratification. If it just thinks ahead of itself and its desire for personal gratification. If it just thinks ahead of now.
If the people of this wealthy society unite in common cause, they can do things that are impossible alone. They can do things that are impossible for individuals alone. They can even do things that are impossible for large institutions alone, or groups of those institutions. If the entire society gathers, unites, and agrees to work together, it can do things that have never been done.
At the same time, if a…
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Posted on: July 21, 2008
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
It’s not often that a great writer’s life is more interesting in some ways than his books. But that’s the case with Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Born on the island of Java in 1925, Toer lived through several revolutions and national rebellions, participated in a few himself, and was imprisoned both by the Dutch colonial government and then later by the Suharto régime.
While in jail during his first imprisonment in 1947 – 49, he wrote his first novel, The Fugitive. During his second imprisonment, this time by the Suharto régime in 1965, he accomplished something even more amazing. Denied pen and paper, he managed to construct a tetralogy, recite it to his fellow prisoners, and eventually get it down on paper and published after his release in 1979.
Toer said in an interview:
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Posted on: July 19, 2008
Untitled, by Mark Rothko. 1952
All art is paradox. But Rothko, perhaps more than any other modern painter, embraced the paradox and threw it profoundly in our faces.
The canvas is flat. You can’t enter it. You can’t go through it, if it’s hanging on the wall. At least without injury and perhaps a heavy bill from the gallery. But Rothko continuously tells the audience to do just that. Embrace the painting, enter it, walk into it, let it engulf you and torture you and shake you. Shake the core of you. He wants the painting to be a plane and an entrance way in the same bright moment. Flat and omnipresent. Pressed against the wall as it surrounds you. And he wants you to accept the paradox and reject it long enough to succumb.
“We favor the simple expression of
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Posted on: July 18, 2008
Roberto Arlt
Roberto Arlt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1900. His parents were German immigrants and German was the language spoken at home. They were poor. Long term formal education was pretty much out of the question, so Roberto took to the streets at an early age and learned there and in the library. He read a lot of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I can see Raskolnikov in his books, and Dostoevsky hovering over them, though Arlt puts less anger and despair on the page. Ezra Pound would have said of Arlt, if he had known him, that he modernized himself.
It was also the case that he made his own way in society with little help, working hard at an early age, writing for newspapers, later joining the military, and then taking odd jobs here and there until his career in…
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