Orts #993
Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful. . . . Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing nature more favorably. We learn to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: to dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. . . . Nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts affect the scenery. We see places through our humors as through differently colored glasses. . . . We come down to the sermon in stones when we are shut out from any poem in the spread landscape. We begin to peep and botanize, we take an interest in birds and insects, we find many things beautiful in miniature. . . . With all this in mind, I have often been tempted to put forth the paradox that any place is good enough to live a life in, . . . . For if we only stay long enough we become at home in the neighborhood.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, in an essay, On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places, from in the periodical Portfolio, November 1874. Quoted in Lapham's Quarterly, May 21 2020:
https://bit.ly/2LV9VW2
_________________________________
To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Everything else…is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.
-- Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942
_________________________________
. . . the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?
-- Victor Frankl, in Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, first published (in German) in 1946, English translation first published March 2020
_________________________________
‘For a while it proceeds soberly, musically, and not mindlessly, but soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and dominates until the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played: it is tugged about, torn, beaten black and blue.’
— Eduard Hanslick, in a review of the premiere of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, in the Neue freie Presse, December 5, 1881