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Quote by Svetlana Alexievich

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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Svetlana Alexievich

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“Ich konnte es begreifen, daß ein Chemiker in einem Gemälde von Michelangelo nur den Grund von Mauerkalk und die darauf gestrichene Ölfarbe, in einem Karton von Kaulbach nur Papier und Kreide sah; ich nahm es dem Mathematiker nicht übel, wenn er die Kuppel des römischen Pantheon nur als geometrische Figur betrachtete; ich verstand es, wenn der Physiker bei einer Symphonie von Beethoven an die Zahl der Schwingungen dachte, welche die verschiedenen Töne bemaß und bestimmte, oder wenn er das schöne Farbenspiel der Blumen ausschließlich nach den verschiedenen Strahlenbrechungen des Sonnenlichtes beurteilte. Ich hatte an sich gegen solche wissenschaftliche Betrachtung nichts als das einzuwenden, daß sie die Hauptsache nicht erkläre, daß sie nur untergeordnete Beziehungen aufdecke.”

ArtScienceMathematics
Author:Rudolf Virchow
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“Can you not see artistic development— how he renounced the realism of his earlier years, and advanced into abstract, nonrepresentational art?’ He had indeed moved from realism to nonrepresentation to the abstract, yet this was not the artist, but the pathology, advancing—advancing towards a profound visual agnosia, in which all powers of representation and imagery, all sense of the concrete, all sense of reality, were being destroyed. This wall of paintings was a tragic pathological exhibit, which belonged to neurology, not art. And yet, I wondered, was she not partly right? For there is often a struggle, and sometimes, even more interestingly, a collusion between the powers of pathology and creation.”

ArtSelfScienceHistoryPsychologyIdentityAgnosia
Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
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“We all need art and music like we need blood and oxygen. The more exploitative, numbing, and assaulting popular culture becomes, the more we need the truth of a beautifully phrased song, dredged from a real person’s depth of experience, delivered in an honest voice; the more we need the simplicity of paint on canvas, or the arc of a lonely body in the air, or the photographer’s unflinching eye. Art, in the larger sense, is the lifeline to which I cling in a confusing, unfair, sometimes dehumanizing world.”

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Book:Composed: A Memoir
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