Motion and art

“The statue is concentrated in one moment of perfection. The image stained upon the canvas posses no spiritual element of growth or change. If they know nothing of death, it is because they know nothing of life, for the secrets of life and death belong to those, and those only, whom the sequence of time affects, and who possess the present but the future, and can rise or fall from a past of glory or of shame. Movement, that problem of the visible arts, can be fully realized by Literature alone. It is Literature that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest.”

– Oscar Wilde

Cited in: Kindermann,William and Krebs, Harold (ed.) (1996) The Second Practice of Nineteenth Century Tonality. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 114.

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