Extraordinary Discourse 203

Hors D'oeuvres For The Turning Table





Quite simply, to approach any utterance as if its meaning is separable from its presentation is to disallow art in every positive sense of that word. It is to strip away the individuation that might make a work a new witness, and it is to violate the bond of reader and writer. The essence of our art lies in creating a lingering dream, good or bad, that other souls can enter. Dreaming one's soul into another's is an urgent business of the human mind: the dreaming itself, not whatever agenda can supposedly be extracted from it. As art, it plays on the nerves and senses like a dream. It unfolds over time like a dream. It makes its own often disturbing and often inexplicable appeal to memory and emotion, creating itself again in the consciousness of the reader or hearer.
from
On "Beauty"
By Marilynne Robinson
From Tin House
Pushcart Prize XXXVII
Best Of The Small Presses