from Aesthetics of Silence by Susan Sontag (1966)
"though no longer a confession, art is more than ever a deliverance, an exercise in asceticism. Through it, the artist becomes purified - of herself* and, eventually, of her art. The artist (if not art itself) is still engaged in a progress toward "the good". But whereas formerly the artist's good was mastery of and fulfillment of her art, now the highest good for the artist is to reach the point where those goals of excellence become insignificant to her, emotionally and ethically, and she is more satisfied being silent than by finding a voice in art. Silence, in this sense, as termination, proposes a mode of ultimacy antithetical to the mood informing the self-conscious artist's traditional serious use of silence (beautifully described by Valery and Rilke): as a zone of meditation, preparation and spiritual ripening, an ordeal that ends in gaining the right to speak."
'guess, but how is it decided that you've said enough, so begin the period of silence? Do you have to have been 'outspoken', or legitimized somehow, don't think she's talking about the silent proles, is their silence loaded with spirituality?
As much as I am legitimized by this, I feel all mixed up.
"free...of the servile bondage of the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of..work"
love yer Su.
*I changed it from all hims.
"though no longer a confession, art is more than ever a deliverance, an exercise in asceticism. Through it, the artist becomes purified - of herself* and, eventually, of her art. The artist (if not art itself) is still engaged in a progress toward "the good". But whereas formerly the artist's good was mastery of and fulfillment of her art, now the highest good for the artist is to reach the point where those goals of excellence become insignificant to her, emotionally and ethically, and she is more satisfied being silent than by finding a voice in art. Silence, in this sense, as termination, proposes a mode of ultimacy antithetical to the mood informing the self-conscious artist's traditional serious use of silence (beautifully described by Valery and Rilke): as a zone of meditation, preparation and spiritual ripening, an ordeal that ends in gaining the right to speak."
'guess, but how is it decided that you've said enough, so begin the period of silence? Do you have to have been 'outspoken', or legitimized somehow, don't think she's talking about the silent proles, is their silence loaded with spirituality?
As much as I am legitimized by this, I feel all mixed up.
"free...of the servile bondage of the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of..work"
love yer Su.
*I changed it from all hims.
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