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/lit/ - Literature

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928921 No.928921 [Reply] [Original]

>Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

From Chesterton
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm

>> No.928933

luv u

>> No.928952
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928952

I personally hate limitations, and im always trying to break them when ever i write or draw or do philosophy. If you never broke the laws you would never have any progress

>> No.928971
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928971

Do I detect essentialism?

>> No.929001

>>928952
I think you might've missed the point of this some what. What limitations can you really break beyond the superficial? You can't make something anything other than what it is, and what made it.

It is impossible to say anything sincere without limiting yourself, let's say you're writing philosophy, since you mention it. Every idea that you write must be definable in some way, otherwise it is not what it is, and therefore you've written nothing. Without limiting all the things that your idea can be, you don't actually have an idea.

>> No.929010

I love his fiction, and his style really is immense. But the man was quite the cock, wasn't he?

>> No.929017

>>929010

> But the man was quite the cock, wasn't he?
Part of his charm.

>> No.929025

>>929010
Who the fuck wants to only read really polite motherfuckers? Safe writing is stagnant writing. Give me a douche any day.

>> No.929026

I've always thought of anarchism almost as a branch of socialism. It may be about no laws, but it isn't about no rules - it's just about only having legitimate, necessary rules

>> No.929051

>>929026
That's a slippery slope you've ended up on, sir. I think you'd have a hard time justifying any rule as perfectly legitimate or necessary to all people forced to live under it, unless the community is questions is small or comparably homogeneous in terms of lifestyle preferences.

>> No.929074

>>929051
but that's what anarchism is as a theory/ethic. It may not be an ideal that's possible to realize - I doubt anarchism would even work - but it's the ideal of the anarchist. In anarchistic communities, people are supposed to have a say into all things that affect them directly, and their vote is supposed to have significance in proportion to how much the decision affects them. Again, that may be overly idealistic, but it's one of the most important elements of anarchism (or at least the classical left-anarchism, which is the kind I'm familiar with - anarcho-syndicalism and communism associated with Bakunin and Kropotkin)

>> No.929075

G.K. Chesterton was one of those guys who fancied themselves as an intellectual polymath but ended up being an overhyped critic who made few contributions to most of the fields he wrote about. Y'know, like Bertrand Russell.

>> No.929078

>>929074
*impossible to realize

>> No.929088
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929088

>>929001
this kids cool