The Saunterer

Claude Debussy on “What is art?”

    This is how he describes it:

    Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. . . . Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much reality into the dream. . . .

    (Quoted from page 239 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Claude Debussy, click here. For images of or relating to Claude Debussy, click here.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on how to understand the world

    Much of formal education loads us with abstract knowledge, yet reality has to be felt and abstract knowledge gives no feeling. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explains:

    I tell you; even though like the Sage of sages, you carried in your memory the image of all the beings that peopled the earth or swim in the seas, still all that knowledge would be as nothing for your soul, for all abstract knowledge is a faded reality; this is because to understand the world, knowledge is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality.

    (Quoted from page 27 of The Way to Write, by John Fairfax and John Moat. St. Martin’s Press, 1981.)
    For a brief biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, click here. For images of or relating to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, click here.