Quotes by Athanase Joja

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The poet who wants to escape from society, who thinks he is above the "scum", who wants to make art for art's sake, is a prisoner of an illusion...

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Art is not a natural fact, but the reproduction, mimesis imitation, of a natural fact, consequently, an artificial fact. Thus, art is a specifically human manifestation.

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The people themselves, through the efforts of many generations, complete their own profile, but the great artists elevate the characteristics of the respective people to universality. The works of great artists are organically incorporated into this profile.

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It is impossible to defend yourself definitively and materially, physically, against death. But if no one can evade it, at least the ideal domination of death is permitted, entrusting to the memory of men - and in a form rising to universality - the gestures and thoughts of mortals. To raise one's own self above the contingency and banality of everyday life, to raise one's own individuality to the splendor of universality, and then to perpetuate itself over successive generations, to impose itself on memory - this is what art ultimately tends towards. To overcome the contingent singular, to transform it into the persistent universal, aere perennius.

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Unable to encompass his immortality as an individual, the man-artist acquires it by participating in the universality of the genre. Unable to gain immortality in extension, he acquires it in intensity.

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Art is also a form of knowledge. It makes up for the structural defects of the intellect. Its raison d'être is to make us sensitive and present the essence of things through the image.