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