The Saunterer

Leonardo da Vinci on learning how to paint the state of Man’s mind

    As Leonardo da Vinci tells it:

A good painter has two subjects of primary importance: Man and the state of Man’s mind. The first is easy, the latter difficult, since it must be conveyed by means of the gestures and movements of the various parts of the body. This one should learn from the deaf-mutes; for they express themselves better in this way than any other group of human beings. (Quoted from Leonardo da Vinci, by Ludwig Heydenreich, The MacMillan Co. vol 1, page 27,1954.)   

    For a brief biography of Leonardo da Vinci, click here.

Alfred K. Mann on the need for a discipline called “science appreciation”

    The discipline called art appreciation serves a needed purpose. There isn’t a discipline called science appreciation, and by that a needed purpose goes unserved. As Alfred K. Mann explains:

The challenge facing scientists is to find a way to convey the essential features, elegance, and simplicity of important works of science so that those features may be appreciated, just as they are appreciated in important works of art. We need a discipline that might be called “science appreciation” to go along with the well-established discipline of art appreciation. . . . For most scientists . . . the desire to have their work better understood is motivated principally by the idea that the culture of science - which they regard as a precious part of the modern age - should be shared with and understood by the society that is immersed in it and yet apart from it. In this they have the same motivation as the artists. (Quoted from Shadow of a Star: The Neutrino Story of Supernova, by Alfred K. Mann, W. H. Freeman & Company, 1987.)

    For a brief biography of Alfred K. Mann, click here.

Konrad Lorenz on Greenpeace conservationists

    Perhaps the most distressing fact in the present state of the world is the loss of unspoiled nature. Desperate actions to save wild nature are, Konrad Lorenz believed, above government law:

The acts of violence perpetrated by Greenpeace conservationists are often necessary in the face of the insurmountable difficulties we find in the world. Today, it is very difficult to uncover any remnants of truly unspoiled nature, and that which remains should be defended with all vehemence. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 311.)

    For a brief biography of Konrad Lorenz, click here. To learn about Greenpeace, click here.

Yehudi Menuhin on how music creates order

    Each of the three components of music - rhythm, melody, and harmony - creates order, said Yehudi Menuhin:

Music creates order out of chaos; for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent; melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous. (Quoted from The Artful Universe, by John D. Barrow, p. 186.)

    For a brief biography of Yehudi Menuhin, click here.

Marguerite Blessington on when it is better to die young

    Marguerite Blessington believed there was a condition in which it was better to die young:

It is better to die young than to outlive all one loved, and all that rendered one lovable. (Quoted from The confessions of an elderly gentleman, by Marguerite Blessington, 1836.)

    For a brief biography of Marguerite Blessington, click here.

Jacques Barzun on what art is for

    There are many rewards for those who frequent art museums, believed Jacques Barzun:

Art is power. It influences the mind, the nerves, the feelings, the soul. It carries messages of hope, hostility, derision, and moral rebuke. It can fight material and spiritual evils, and transmit the ideals of a community now living, long past, or soon to be born. In a word, Art is deemed universally important because it helps men to live and to remember. (Quoted from The Use and Abuse of Art, by Jacques Barzun, p. 21.)

    For a brief biography of Jacques Barzun, click here.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on cosmophilia

    Biophilia is love of nature. E. O. Wilson and others have corroborated the Biophilia Hypothesis, which states that love of nature is inborn in us.
    On this pattern, we have coined the word cosmophilia, for love of the cosmos, specifically of the moon and the visible night sky. We propose the Cosmophilia Hypothesis, which states that love of the cosmos is inborn.
    Now comes a passage where Samuel Taylor Coleridge notes his love for nature, including the moon:

In looking at objects of nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon, dim-glittering through the window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling, as if that new phenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature. (Quoted from Walter Pater: Essays on Literature and Art, Jennifer Uglow, ed., London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1973, p. 11.)

    What if the same obscure feeling exists in some of the members of every culture around the world? That would confirm the Cosmophilia Hypothesis.

    For information on biophilia, click here and here. For a brief biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here. For the same of Walter Pater, click here.

John Muir on wilderness and Christianity

    Christianity has a few bad points. One of the few is its championing people as deserving dominion over Earth and all other life forms. So believed John Muir:

In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal ere we are aware.
    The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator. . . . (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 340.)

    For a brief biography of John Muir, click here.

Martha Gellhorn’s problem with Mozart’s music

    Mozart’s music didn’t reach Martha Gellhorn’s bones:

I am half drunk on a judicious mixture of despair and two whiskies. Meanwhile a Mozart concerto is whisking out of the gramophone; in fact I cannot endure Mozart; it seems to me all brightness and no feeling, a permanent child prodigy, clever as hell, and never was there, not a clue to the human condition. It’s like mathematics, the way that smart fellow writes music. I like my music written from the viscera. (Quoted from Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn.)

    For a brief biography of Martha Gellhorn, click here.

Eric Gill on self-repeating artists

    In reading the following (Etienne Gilson’s paraphrase of a remark by Eric Gill), keep in mind that we are all universal artists, practicing in our professions:

The artist does not create de nihilo, but he does create de novo. This is so true that when we want to say of an artist that he has had his day, we simply say that he is unable to renew himself. A self-repeating artist has reached the end of his creative activity. (Quoted from Painting and Reality, by Etienne Gilson, The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1955, page 288.)

    For a brief biography of Eric Gill, click here. For a brief biography of Etienne Gilson, click here.