When I struggle with writing, the easiest way out I have found is to share something of what I am currently reading. There is this portion found in Doctor Zhivago (by Boris Pasternak) that really, really appealed to me. The author put in words what I knew in my heart. Oftentimes the material conceals the non-material and the material overshadows it. But it is the non-material which makes the material valuable. In this passage, what Pasternak calls 'art' is what I call the 'non-mateiral.'
"I have always thought that art is not a category, not a realm covering innumerable concepts and derivative phenomena, but that, on the contrary, it is something concentrated, strictly limited. It is a principle that is present in every work of art, a force applied to it and a truth worked out in it…
"A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways - by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art…
"…You can call it an idea, a statement about life, so all-embracing that it can't be split up into separate words; and if there is so much as a particle of it in any work that includes other things as well, it outweigh all the other ingredients in significance and turns out to be the essence, the heart and soul of the work." (Emphasis mine.)
While you all figure out this post, I will figure out my next post. :-)
