Art, pure mind and ...a way to get one.

"All creation presupposes at its origin a sort of appetite that is brought on by the foretaste of discovery. This foretaste of the creative act accompanies the intuitive grasp of an unknown entity already possessed but not yet intelligible, an entity that will not take definite shape except by the action of a constantly vigilant technique.

This appetite that is aroused in me at the mere thought of putting in order musical elements that have attracted my attention is not at all a fortuitous thing like inspiration, but as habitual and periodic, if not as constant, as a natural need.

This premonition of an obligation, this foretaste of a pleasure, this conditioned reflex, as a modern physiologist would say, shows clearly that it is the idea of discovery and hard work that attracts me.

The very act of putting my work on paper, of, as we say, kneading the dough, is for me inseparable from the pleasure of creation. So far as I am concerned, I cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort; they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy.

The word artist which, as it is most generally understood today, bestows on its bearer the highest intellectual prestige, the privilege of being accepted as a pure mind."

from Igor Stravinsky's Poetics of Music, 1939-40

Jessye Norman singing as Jocasta "Nonn' erubescite, Reges"
in I. Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex

"...
Art is to obey the significant, eternal Laws.
and as I'm looking into my notes, I'm finding a poem that goes like that:
"PIETY
Oh God, you posed Laws everywhere. Help me to follow them, not to offend them."
...
Young people, dispossessing the individual will, work for docility.
That and that alone will give you the gift of real Freedom."

from Dimitris Pikionis' Autobiographical Notes

a sample of pure mind

Post dedicated to the architect Nikitas Hiotinis (Νικήτας Χιωτίνης)
the teacher who taught me
how to appreciate Culture
- in general, and Greek Culture in particular -
in its relation to human as a person and its relation to pure mind.

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