Saturday, December 24, 2011

The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), by Leo Tolstoy

Art, understood as instrument for stimulating sensuality, becomes a two-fold diabolic trap. On one hand, understanding art as purely sensual phenomenon blocks in the majority of potentially spiritual people their ability to perceive spirituality in art. On the other hand, the disdain of the minority toward sensuality through art forces them away from art and towards cultural self-deprivation (something that actually happened to Tolstoy).

(The subject matter, with a certain degree of success, was visually and dramatically expressed in 1901 by the painter René François Xavier Prinet – see the reproduction above.)

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