Elizabeth said:
It is poetry.
Dulcamara said:
That's what I was afraid of.
Huh? I can't make any sense out of that. :)
I was trying not to say it outright, for charity's sake. It wasn't you I meant to attack, but the principals and ideas behind modern art.
Tell me seriously... what benefit do you suppose all of us can get from these kinds of poems, if when we read them, we haven't got the vaguest idea what you were trying to say (if anything)? If you write this kind of thing, you may think you're very clever, but if no one else knows what you mean... okay, you've fooled us. Now what? We don't know what you mean. If we don't know, then what have you really imparted to us in sharing it, except to prove that you can write something that no one will be able to decipher?
I'm not saying not to share your work. I'm just hoping you'll stop and think about WHAT you're sharing... which won't be very much if nobody can understand what you're saying at all.
It is written in the Bible of speaking in tongues, that one or two men, or a few at a time should only be allowed to speak, and that it should be interpreted,
so that it is known what is being spoken. Why? Because if one of the apostles were speaking Japanese to the Greeks, they would have thought him a fool, and no one would have been edified at all. And the gift of tongues were not given to men to glorify (or even amuse) the men,
but to edify their fellow men.Having talent and using it for modern art, would be like the apostles going to preach to the Greeks in Japanese, without interpreting. Hooray for Japanese, but no one would have been edified, because everyone would just think they were drunken lunatics, because no one would have been able to understand them. Their preaching and all of their God-given wisdom, would have been in vain.
The arts are magnificent lights of God given to men, that they may act in the image of the Creator and Author of all. With the arts, men are able to edify, instruct, uplift, share knowledge and experience, and many other good things, in ADDITION to... simply delighting the senses, such as colors by themselves can do.
But ask yourself honestly... is a man's soul uplifted more by a mess of colors on the canvas, or by the Sistine chapel? Or even by the Pieta, for that matter, which is blank marble, but for it's form a most excellent topic of holy contemplation? If I want to contemplate the colors by themselves, I can find them on far fairer canvasses in the fields, called the flowers. I cannot, however, go back in time and behold Mary mourning her Divine Son. But because of the gift of God of talents to the artists throughout history, I can see that, and contemplate it, which raises my soul to God.
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not trying to attack you personally. But the overthrowing of every sane, ordered, useful and beautiful quality of the God-given arts, is simply diabolical. I'm not saying YOU are. I'm saying IT is. You and I can't help the world we were born into, and that this poison is so widespread that just being born into it is enough for it to seep between one's ears. I dare say ALL of us probably believed in it to some extent, at one point or another. (Some people will never give it up.) I only hope that people, or at the very least GOD'S people, will realize what's going on, and stop going along with it.
The errors of the principals behind modern art:1)
ALL men are artists, and everything is art. A denial of the reality of God as the Master of all, giving talents only to those whom He will, because the pride of man will not suffer the possibility that THEY did not get them.
2)
The condemnation of every trait or characteristic of God and His creation, and the praise of every trait or characteristic that is diabolical. So we see the condemnation of that which is orderly, beautiful, realistic, of truth, of virtue, of holiness, edifying, teaching, beneficial to the mind and soul of man... and the praise of disorder, disharmony, senselessness, lies, darkness, chaos, despair, evils, vices, and so forth.
These two principals can be absolutely seen in every kind of modern art, from the erotic and evilly sensual world of modern dance, to the screaming and whining voices of modern music, and from the messes of paint on a canvass to the devilish volumes of lust and errors known as modern fiction, ALL praised by modern man as better than what came before, as more "equal" and more "free" ... but all perfectly in line with diabolical traits, not godly ones.
By this diabolical revolution, the devil has rendered centuries of true talents that were given by God to men, for the benefit of men, utterly fruitless. Men are NOT painting pictures like The Last Supper, because it is much more popular (and easier) to finger-paint or simply throw paint onto a canvas, and call it art. Men are NOT singing or writing songs like the Te Deum or even composing music like Beethoven, but screaming like the devils of hell, and blasting away on their electric guitars with nothing but sheer noise. Men are not making poems like the Divine Comedy, but poems that you could compose by taking words on scraps of paper, and dumping them out on the table. Men are not writing books like St Thomas Aquinas, or even good fiction that presents good and truths to the benefit of the reader, but they're turning out veritable word porn and volume after volume rife with errors and blasphemy.
THAT is modern art. And by it, even the best Catholic will do no good in the world by their art, even if the colors they smear are the prettiest pastels rather than blacks and blood reds, even if the noise they call music mentions God (often very irreverently, though not with the INTENTION of being), even if their poetry uses no sinful words, and even if their books have no bad guys at all, if instead all they have written is total nonsense with no meaning or bearing in life whatsoever. Fruit for God: 0. (Give or take the few exceptions you can probably count on one hand.)
Modern art is, in short, like convincing all of the people in the world simultaneously that every man knows how to farm like an expert, and that it is much more creative to sew seeds that don't ever grow, on the premise that then everyone really WILL be a farmer, and no one will have to work at it at all! Well, you may APPEAR to make every man a farmer that way, and you may get everyone to go along with it... but the result? The whole world will starve, because the few men who really DID know how to farm, fell for it along with the millions of wannabes, and so the few that really could produce food, didn't produce any, either.
It is an impeccable strategy to dam up all real good that possibly COULD have been done by real artists doing real art. Now we have everyone in the world convinced that everyone is an artist, and almost all of us are producing utter nonsense, which is to no avail, while virtually NO ONE is producing real art.If that doesn't smack of the devil, nothing does.
It's a cheat, plain and simple. And a diabolical cheat at that. Which is why it is my sincere hope that neither you, nor anyone else continues to fall for it. Just ask yourself...
Can we serve God with nonsense? Is our way better, if it bears no real fruit among our fellow men?One way you can do very real good, and you can do it for and in God. The other way, you can please yourself all day, every day... but you will not be doing the first thing for your fellow man.
But if we bear no fruit by our talents, but please ourselves only... how are we serving God?
(I expect the tomatoes to fly now I've brought all of this up again, but... it is what it is. If you have genuine talents, why opt to do NO good with them, if you could do SOME good?)
Topic: In the Cell Next to Bishop Williamson (Read 6007 times)