GG 3 Corn. Quotes

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

More quotes from Chapter One of Soseki's _The Three Cornered World_:

Epigraph:
	"An artist is a person who lives in the triangle which remains
after the angle which we may call common sense has been removed from
this four-cornered world" [Think of those camera shots from the end of
CD318 with its lid up as GG plays, framed in a triangle...] 

	"It is true that at times [the poet] experiences the most
exquisite joy, but he also has far more than his fair share of
immeasurable grief. Because of this, one should consider carefully
before deciding to become a poet."

	"In order to appreciate poetry, you must put yourself in the
position of an onlooker, who being able to stand well back, can really
see what is happening. It is only from this position that a play or a
novel can be enjoyed, for here you are free from personal
interests. You are only a poet while you are watching or reading, and
are not actually involved."

	"After thirty years of life in this world of ours, I have had
more than enough of the suffering, anger, belligerence and sadness
which are ever present; and I find it very trying to be subjected to
repeated doses of stimulants designed to evoke these emotions when I
go to the theatre, or read a novel. I want a poem which abandons the
commonplace, and lifts me, at least for a short time, above the dust
and grime of the workaday world; not one which arouses my passions to
an even greater pitch than usual."

	"I long to absorb straight from Nature some of the atmosphere
of Yuan-ming's and Wnag Wei's world; and if only for a brief period,
wander at will through a land which is completely detached from
feelings and emotions. This is a peculiarity of mine." [Think of GG in
_An Art of the Fugue_ talking about the endless range of grey tints
Schweitzer found in _The Art of the Fugue_-- how that void was exactly
why GG loved Bach's masterpiece.]

	"...since my object on coming on this journey was to rise
above emotions, and to view things dispassionately, I am sure that
people appear differently to me now than they did when I lived right
on top of them, in a cramped back street of that unstable and wretched
city-- the world of men." [Is this why GG went on the road trips to
Wawa, why he composed the Solitude Trilogy?]


-Mary Jo, mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu