Monday 21 November 2022
The dawning of strange ideas
In fact, when the period in which a man of talent is obliged to live is dull and stupid, the artist, though unconsciously, is haunted by a nostalgia of some past century. Finding himself unable to harmonize, save at rare intervals, with the environment in which he lives and not discovering sufficient distraction in the pleasures of observation and analysis, in the examination of the environment and its people, he feels in himself the dawning of strange ideas.
Confused desires for other lands awake and are clarified by reflection and study. Instincts, sensations and thoughts bequeathed by heredity, awake, grow fixed, assert themselves with an imperious assurance. He recalls memories of beings and things he has never really known and a time comes when he escapes from the penitentiary of his age and roves, in full liberty, into another epoch with which, through a last illusion, he seems more in harmony. With some, it is a return to vanished ages, to extinct civilizations, to dead epochs; with others, it is an urge towards a fantastic future, to a more or less intense vision of a period about to dawn, whose image, by an effect of atavism of which he is unaware, is a reproduction of some past age.
Joris-Karl Huysmans - À rebours (1884)
To my mind, an evocative quote as most of us have some kind of talent and are certainly obliged to live in dull and stupid times. The media don’t tell us so, but there is a lot of depth and variety of talent around if comments on this blog and others I read are any guide.
Of course, the here and now doesn’t have to be dull and stupid. We don’t have to watch the World Cup, join in the climate change hysteria or pretend Joe Biden is fit to be US President. We don’t have to clap the NHS or bend the knee to the politics of violence, and this can be an escape, even if other people think we have some strange ideas.
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2 comments:
Around 40 years ago a work colleague mentioned that she and her husband didn't watch any television. The rest of us were astounded and wondered how they filled their evenings etc.
Today I too rarely watch television - its role of providing bread for the masses (and their consumption of advertising) is only too clear.
Perhaps in 40 years time people will wonder at the ubiquity of the interwebs.
DJ - Mrs H and I began married life without a television, but after a few years we were given one so we made use of it. Now we hardly watch anything. I can't imagine what will happen to the interwebs over coming decades, but I hope it doesn't become as hopelessly banal as television.
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