Book: The elegance of the hedgehog. Page 1

To live, to feed themselves, produce offspring, to do what we were born to die - complete nonsense, I agree, but that is the order of things. But people arrogantly believe that they can overcome nature, to get away from their assigned poor biological creatures, destiny, being blind to the cruelty and rudeness, which is their life, their love, their childbearing and fratricidal war.
I think the only thing we can do is try to find the thing for which we were born, and to fulfill it to the best of their ability, nothing complicating and not believing in fairy tales about the divine in our animal nature. Only then death will take us for the good occupation. Freedom, choice, will - all is a Chimera. We imagine, if you can make honey without sharing the fate of the bees; but it is not: we are as poor bees, which should do what you must, and then die.

Why you need art? To play a brief but stunning effect of Camellia drive in the fabric of time wedge of emotion that goes beyond the five animal senses. How does the art? It owes its existence to the ability of the human mind to create sensual images. What makes art? It invests in the form and makes visible our emotions, thus imposing on them the seal of eternity; such seal shall bear all the works are able to bring in private form the General content of the sphere of the senses.
The seal of eternity... what kind Of invisible life that tell us all these viands, goblets, carpets and glasses? Beyond the picture - the bustle and boredom of everyday life, a continuous, exhausting and meaningless flickering of a variety of aspirations, inside her - the fullness of the moment which snatched from time, devoured by human greed. Oh, the greed! We are not able to stop desiring, and it both praises and kills us. Desire! It takes us and torments us every day throwing the battlefield, where the day before we were defeated, but which is now again filled with sun and again beckons us conquests; it encourages, though tomorrow we will die, to pile up the Empire, doomed to crumble to dust, as if the knowledge that they will soon crash should not temper your thirst to build them right now; it feeds our insatiable passion to possess what is available to us; at the dawn of our life, it brings us to the green plains, littered with corpses, and provides a stock of ideas and plans, which will last until death: barely fulfilled one, as another one appears. But infinitely much to be so tiring... And we want fun, and you don't need to strive, we dream about the bliss that arises naturally as a result of the aspirations and achievements, and as a manifestation of our very nature. Art is such a bliss. I'm not covered this table. And to see this snack, I do not need it. Someone else somewhere, in another life, up to this feast, someone enticed hardened transparent glass and delight your taste brackish gloss oyster with lemon juice. Among the hundreds of ideas flowing in someone's head and instantly spawned a thousand others, had to stand out the intention to cook and eat this oyster meal, it's a still life.
We look at a picture and get without making any effort, engaging on the fly captured the beauty of things, experience joy without lust, to behold what has arisen against our will, admired what we did not have much. And since this still life is a beauty that nourishes our desire, but born of the desire of another person, gives us pleasure which was not in our intentions, given to us though and did not require effort of will, he embodies the quintessence of art, the involvement of eternity. In a silent, motionless scene, where nothing of the living, embodied time, free from intentions, perfection is not constrained by any deadlines and are not corroded by greed, pleasure without desire, a life without beginning or end, beauty without effort.
Because art is emotion outside of the desire.

What is the nature of the delight that we experience before certain works? They amaze us at first sight, and how would then we're straining to find reasons of this phenomenon, no matter how he tried, patiently and persistently, to comprehend the essence of beauty, born of the skill, no matter how much apart the delicate brush work, which managed to convey the play of shadows and light, to recreate the perfection of form and texture: a transparent core of glass, the rough grit of shells, fresh, velvety lemon - all this does not reveal or explain the mystery of the original astonishment.
This miracle happens again and again: great pictures are our eyes forms corresponding to our inborn sense of authenticity that is independent of time. There is something infinitely moving about the obvious fact that some forms, even different artists and give them a different look, go through the entire history of painting and that there was a universal genius, manifesting the many facets of creativity each individual of the brilliant master. In consonance creations Klas, Raphael, Rubens and hopper? Despite the difference of subjects, equipment and material, despite its brevity and the ephemeral nature of human life inevitably belong only to one era and one culture only, even, finally, on the only possible for the artist's view of the world - because he sees everything so how is his eyesight, and suffers from the narrow confines of one's own individuality, the genius of great artists penetrates the mystery of beauty, and extracts the light eternal, the same, although in different guises, the divine form that we look for in any work of art. In consonance creations Klas, Raphael, Rubens and hopper? We find in them - even if not looking for - the very form that awakens in us the feeling of authenticity, because everyone guesses her to be the perfect substance, the absolute, unchanging, blooming spontaneously, free from all context. So is this still life with lemon: its charm is also not reducible to a virtuosity of execution, it also causes a feeling of authenticity, a sense that so needs to be located objects, so that each appeared in all its fullness and in cooperation with others to view opened their harmony, and the forces of attraction and repulsion acting between them and forming a powerful nexus of their field, the magnetism, the underlying, not expressible by words wave, which keeps the tension and balance of the whole composition - that is, in the arrangement of glasses meals and eatables to read the same universality expressed in the special, the one eternal true form.

Then I quit? When within is something drastically changes, it doesn't give words, and the condition and situation as when you move to another home.

Those who, like me, are attracted by the nobility of simple things, seek out it in the minor, where it is in the everyday environment is doubly striking combination of functional simplicity and impeccable perfection, when I know for sure: it's good and exactly as it should be.

So is our civilization are so hollow, that we are all the time feeling like we're missing something? We cannot be happy with what you feel and what you have, if you are not sure this will last a long time?

Art is life, only in a modified rhythm.

If we would understand if we got, all and each, we see only ourselves and therefore live in complete solitude, I would have gone mad.

The first time I meet a man who is interested in other people and who sees not only himself.

Two hours of sleep are not conducive to humanity.

It happens in the happiest moments of life. When, torn from the leash of consciousness and intentions, we give up that inner elements, see their own actions like it are not we, and at the same time get pleasure from their involuntary excellence.

After all, we live everyday like the next day he will return.

I appreciate that her ability to despise the barriers, which society without end blocks our simple earthly journey.

Civilization means the suppression of violence, the victory is not final - over aggressiveness of a Primate. For we were, are and will be primates, even learned to appreciate the Camellia on the moss.