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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

John Berger

Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top;
JOHN BERGER

Art Country Italian Mountain Space Top Traditional
When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss.
JOHN BERGER

Anguish Childhood Grief Learn Loss Period Suffer Total
Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
JOHN BERGER

Consider Essential Inseparable Nature Need Pain Pleasure Sense Space Together
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can’t do is to change its consequences.
JOHN BERGER

Consequences Exactly Past Prisoner Wish
Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
JOHN BERGER

Audience Cinema Deep Individually Nature Ritual Theatre Transport Unknown
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Cover Four Inhabit Reading Roof Wall
It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.
JOHN BERGER

Between Explicit Fully Make Relationship Stories Trying Universal Usually Writing
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
JOHN BERGER

Accident Anything Birth Impossible Injustice May Nothing Remain
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.
JOHN BERGER

Beauty Condemned Display Dresses Naked Nue Place
We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
JOHN BERGER

Earth Explanation Knowledge Quite Sight Yet
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Disaster Failure Mean Necessary Perfection Time Ultimate
In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
JOHN BERGER

Average Country Men never Painting Presume Principal Protagonist Rude Spectator
All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this – as in other ways – they are the opposite of paintings.
JOHN BERGER

Forget Opposite Other Pain Painting Photography Remind Way
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality… could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.
JOHN BERGER

Bases Extreme Finishing Giacometti History Impossible Incomplete Portrayed Proposition Reality Share Staring
All creation is in the art of seeing.
JOHN BERGER

All Creation Art See

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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