It’s been quite a few years since I first became familiar with 20th Century Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but I was re-reading his Templeton Address recently and was struck by this observation he makes concerning art:
“In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.”~ from the Templeton Address, Men Have Forgotten God
I also thought this was a vivid and inspiring statement:
“It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God’s heaven.”
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