sábado, novembro 22, 2008

the rest of us

"When I read Robert Ferguson's biography of Hamsun to prepare this essay, I must admit that I became so disgusted by the great writer that his excellence as an artist suddenly seemed trivial, even irrelevant. His history poses the same problem as the cases of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Ezra Pound. People who are indifferent to art have no problem dismissing them out of hand. Aesthetes without a conscience enjoy them without a second thought. The rest of us have to face the unresolvable paradox that these key figures in twentieth-century literature are morally intolerable and artistically indispensable".

Edmund White, "Knut Hamsun", Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 16 (Fall, 1996).

1 comentário:

El-Gee disse...

Ora aqui temos um dilema que já me provoca algum interesse.