The Serious Artist
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"As there are in medicine the art of diagnosis and the art of cure, so in the arts, so in the particular arts of poetry and of literature, there is the art of diagnosis and there is the art of cure. They call one the cult of ugliness and the other the cult of beauty. The cult of beauty is the hygiene, it is sun, air and the sea and the rain and the lake bathing. The cult of ugliness, Villon, Baudelaire, Corbière, Beardsley are diagnosis. Flaubert is diagnosis. Satire, if we are to ride this metaphor to staggers, satire is surgery, insertions and amputations." --"The Serious Artist" (1913) by Ezra Pound |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
"The Serious Artist" (1913) is an essay by Ezra Pound.
In the essay, Pound discusses two types of art; The "cult of beauty" and the "cult of ugliness". He compares the former with medical cure and the latter with medical diagnosis, and goes on to write "Villon, Baudelaire, Corbière, Beardsley are diagnosis."
Incipit
- It is curious that one should be asked to rewrite Sidney’s Defence of Poesy in the year of grace 1913.
