About This Activity
Join literature professor and writer Allister Timms on a journey to discover what forces drive artists to set down visions that become art. For insight and examples, we will read William Blake, Angela Carter, Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodore Roethke, Dylan Thomas, and others. Students are also welcome to bring in their own favorite works or fiction or poetry to share. The American poet Edward Hirsch has written that art “is born from struggle and touches an anonymous centre.” The German philosopher Nietzsche famously stated, “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” How does an artist create his or her work and how do their experiences of the world come to help define our own? If works of art have vitality, energy, and expressiveness then what does the artist tap into in order for a work of art to engage and seduce the imagination? We will also look at the relationships between truth, beauty, and seriousness and what our ultimate reaction should be to a work of the imagination—can a work of art give palpable form to consciousness and aesthetic nourishment, which may truly be at the heart of any serious discovery?
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