Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Siri Hustvedt – Blazing World


‘Don’t let anyone tell you that there are no magic words.’

This phrase really got to me. Especially since it reminded me of the fact that I already knew that. An oak is not felled at one stroke, my sister once told me in a grey period of my life, at my first coming to Bucharest. And I pulled through for I had understood this.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth, Oscar Wilde said. Can literature be a mask? What about artistic creations?

Yes. Siri Hustvedt’s novel brings arguments to support this. Also, there is an entire discussion about forms within it. How we perceive them, how we represent them, how we subject to them, how we were taught to look at them, to accept them and to live according to all prejudices we have against them.

 

There is a question that I really appreciated and with which I would like to end:

Was there ever a work of art that was not burdened with the expectations and prejudices of the viewer, reader or listener, regardless of their degree of education or refinement?

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