Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture VIII






Health of the soul.

... We should think of the most authoritative part of our
soul as a guardian spirit given to each of us by god, living in
the summit of our body, which can properly be said to lift us
from the earth towards our home in heaven, as if we were a
heavenly and not an earthbound plant. For where the soul first
grew into being, from there our divine part attaches us by
the head to heaven, like a plant by its roots, and keeps our 
body upright. If therefore a man's attention and effort have been
centred on appetite and ambition, all his opinions are bound to
have become mortal, and he can hardly fail, in so far as it is
possible, to become entirely mortal, as it is the mortal part that
he has increased. But a man who has given his heart to learning
and true wisdom and exercised that part of himself is surely
bound, if he attains to truth, to have immortal and divine 
thoughts, and cannot fail to participate in immortality as fully
as is possible for human nature; and because he has always
looked after the divine element in himself and kept his guardian
spirit in good order he, above all men, must be happy. There is
of course only one way to look after anything and that is to
give it its proper nourishment and motions. And the motions
that are akin to the divine in us are the thoughts and revolutions 
of the universe. We should each therefore attend to these
motions and by learning thoroughly about the harmonies and
revolutions of the universe repair the damage done to the
circuits in our head in connection with our coming into being,
and so restore our understanding, in accordance with its 
original nature, to its likeness with the object of understanding.
When that is done we shall have achieved the goal set us by 
the gods, the life that is best for this present time and for all time
to come.



Timaeus
Plato
(Translated by Desmond Lee)






Sculpture in progress






Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture VII






... The first are afraid of invalidating Beauty dynamically- that is, as
an operative power- by separating what is yet combined in the feeling;
the others are afraid of invalidating Beauty logically- that is, as a concept-
by bringing together what is yet separate in the understanding. The 
former want to think of Beauty as it operates; the latter want to have it
operate as thought. Both must therefore miss the truth, the former 
because they seek to rival infinite Nature with their limited intellectual
capacity, the latter because they are trying to restrict infinite Nature to 
their own intellectual laws. The first are afraid of robbing Beauty of its
freedom by analysing it too closely; the others are afraid of destroying 
the definiteness of its conception by combining it too boldly. But 
the former do not reflect that the freedom in which they quite rightly 
place the essence of Beauty is not lawlessness but harmony of laws,
not arbitrariness but the utmost inner necessity; the latter do not reflect
that the definiteness which they equally rightly demand of Beauty
consists not in the exclusion of certain realities but in the absolute 
inclusion of them all, so that it is therefore not restriction but infinity. 
We shall avoid the rocks upon which they both of them founder if we 
start from the two elements into which Beauty is divided for the intellect, 
and then later ascend to the pure aesthetic unity through which she 
works upon the perceptions, and in which both those conditions 
completely disappear.



Eighteenth Letter
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)





Sculpture in progress





Monday, September 12, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture VI






... Our second business, then, is to make this combination perfect,
to accomplish it so purely and completely that both conditions
entirely disappear in a third, and no trace of the division remains
behind in the whole; otherwise we are isolating and not uniting 
them. All the disputes that have ever prevailed in the philosophical 
world, and still prevail to some extent nowadays, about the conception 
of Beauty, have the single origin that people either began the enquiry
without the requisite strictness of discrimination, or else did not carry
it through to a completely pure combination. Those philosophers who
blindly trust the guidance of their feelings in considering the subject 
can arrive at no concept of Beauty, because they distinguish nothing  
individual in the totality of the sensuous impression. The others, 
who take the intellect as their exclusive guide, can never arrive at a 
concept of Beauty, because they never see in its totality anything
but the parts, and spirit and matter remain, even in completest union,
for ever separate to them.






Eighteenth Letter
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)






Sculpture in progress





Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture V






... It is really a question of two utterly different operations,
which in this enquiry must necessarily support each other.
Beauty, it is said, links together two conditions which are
opposed to each other and can never become one. It is
from this opposition that we must start; we must comprehend
and recognize it in its whole purity and strictness, so that
the two conditions are separated in the most definite way;
otherwise we are mixing but not uniting them. Secondly, 
it is said that Beauty combines those two opposite conditions, 
and thus removes the opposition. But since both conditions
remain eternally opposed to one another, they can only be
combined by cancellation.



Eighteenth Letter
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)





Sculpture in progress





Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture IV






... How are we to remove this contradiction?
Beauty combines the two opposite conditions of perceiving
and thinking, and yet there is no possible mean between the
two of them. The one is made certain through experience,
the other directly through reason.
This is the precise point to which the whole question
concerning Beauty is leading; and if we succeed in solving
this question satisfactorily we have at the same time the
clue which will lead us through the whole labyrinth of
aesthetics.



Eighteenth Letter 
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)



Sculpture in progress



Friday, September 9, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture III






... It appears to follow from this that a condition must exist
midway between matter and form, between passivity and
activity, and that Beauty transports us into this intermediate
condition. This is the conception of Beauty that the majority
of people actually form for themselves, as soon as they begin
to reflect on her workings, and all experiences do point that 
way. But on the other hand nothing is more inconsistent and
contradictory than such a conception, since the distance
between matter and form, between passivity and activity,
between sensation and thought, is infinite, and the two 
cannot conceivably be reconciled. 



Eighteenth Letter
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)




Sculpture in progress



Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture II







Eighteenth Letter


THROUGH Beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to
thought; through Beauty the spiritual man is brought back 
to matter and restored to the world of sense.


On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(translated by Reginald Snell)




Sculpture in progress



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Garden of Earthly Delights-sculpture






Normal growth and decay; natural death.

Decline is caused by excess of wastage over intake, growth by
the opposite. And when the structure of the entire creature is
young, and the triangles of its constituent elements are new,
like a ship straight from the stocks, they are locked firmly
together, though the consistency of the whole aggregate is soft,
having been recently formed of marrow and fed on milk. So
the triangles composing the food and drink which the structure
takes into itself from the outside are older and weaker than
those in itself, which are new, and it breaks them up and
absorbs them, and so it makes the animal big by nourishing it 
on many similar triangles. But when the root of the triangles is
loosened by fighting numerous combats with many opponents
over a long period of time, they can no longer cut up into
their own likeness the triangles of the food taken in, but are
themselves easily broken up by the newcomers; and in the
process every creature fails and declines into the condition
which we call 'old age'. Finally, when the bonds of the triangles
in the marrow fail and part under stress, the bonds of the
soul are also loosened; and when this happens in the course of
nature the soul departs gladly- for everything that takes place
naturally is pleasant, whereas what is contrary to nature is
painful. So a death by disease or injury is painful and forced,
but one that brings life to its natural close by old age is of all
deaths least distressing and brings pleasure rather than pain.

Timaeus
Plato
(translated by Desmond Lee)



Sculpture in progress