A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
Rebecca WestRead
works of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on how art, like ghosts, evokes emotions and sensations in humans that can be both profound and unsettling.
Rebecca West's quote suggests a deep parallel between the way human beings perceive works of art and the way they relate to the concept of ghosts. Just as spectres are transparent, elusive, and unsettling, art can evoke similar feelings of discomfort due to the stark contrast between the permanence and significance of a finished piece and the fleeting, often insignificant nature of human existence. The quote highlights that while art can hold profound meaning, it also confronts us with our own existential insignificance.
Themes
ArtMeaningExistencePerceptionSignificance
In practice
Example use cases
In an art class, discussing how art captures deeper meanings can invoke this quote.
More from Rebecca West
All quotes →I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
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All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
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It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.
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God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
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She did not suddenly start being disagreeable this afternoon, she was so good at it, she had evidently practised whatever are the scales and arpeggios of rudeness every day of her life.
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