Santa Libera and the Absolute Image of the Things

I met Simone Weil

I wanted to meet her.
She was in a bar, talking to some workers, rolling and smoking cigarettes all the time.
I have stolen pieces of thoughts, vision, passion, strong words without possibility to escape, which were saying:

Write as much as possible: to learn to write well means learning to think well. The writing can be more honest than talking, because it doesn’t have to keep in count of the public, of the other.

The thought has to be considered as work. Such as writing, painting, composing music: work. As to build, to shape. You learn, and you get to the results, as you learn to become a smith, only doing.
And to be able to do you have to be free.
To be truly free is to act according to the will, and not to indulge to the desire and passion that enslave.
The will does not manifest in intention, neither in the decision, but only in action.

To have with the Greats and with their works a ratio of daily habit: read them, read them again, learn them. The great works of Art speak the language of the absolute, of beauty, which awakens the thought and guides man to the truth of himself.
Everyone must move towards this beauty to build the autonomy of his own mind. Man must rise above himself. We must have in ourselves the idea that we must change, transform ourselves.

It’s not enough to want to have. You can not have it directly.
But we must act to make it happen, and to do this you need first to have in front of your eyes your life all and to decide to do something with it,  pointing it in a certain way of the will and of the work.
Is the total involvement, the entire action, which involves body and soul, which leaves no room.

You have to decide for yourself, at any cost, you don’t have the right to place yourself under the authority of another.

You need a teacher, who is a real teacher, only if he teaches you to seek the truth through your own life.

The knowledge. It 's a work of the thought. It has to be able to save from  impetuous action (emotion), from  smoky imagination, from blind opinion, and from violence.

The attention as essential nourishment for thought. Thought as maximum push to  attention.

Living the thought as attention to a task made of moments connected to a precise goal, leads to the awareness of the liberating function of thought.
The concrete definition of freedom is when the thought of the action comes before the action.
Understanding of our own work and the perception of its usefulness procure to the man the feeling of creating.

The Art is knowledge. Or rather, Art is exploration.
The triumph of Art is to lead to something else: to life.

Time is the image of necessity and for this has to be accepted in all its moments with awareness.
Do not postpone things. Do not submit blindly to them, do not escape with the unconscious.

We must begin by being faithful to small tasks.

Life can and should be more real and full. Don’t mutilate it in advance with any renunciation. Do not let imprison yourself by any affection. Preserve your solitude. If ever will come a day in which  a "real" friendship is given to you, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship. And it’s from this infallible sign that you will recognize.

Friendship doesn’t have to be found, nor dreamed or desired.
Friendship has to be trained. It’s a virtue.

Pain and beauty can lead us out of the cave towards the true light, but this exit is nothing more than the acquisition of the ability to read multiple meanings of the symbols of the real. Beauty and pain overlap and merge one into the other.

The only possible liberation takes place through obedience to necessity.
The attention to all stages of an "experience" that costs you suffering, and the courage to face them, create in you the "fortitude". Used in this way, suffering, becomes a focus of education and training.

Boredom is a sickness of the soul. Therefore, in all aspects of social life, in every moment of life, you need a certain amount of risk, which would commit the resources of the soul and the courage. In this way you win and eradicates boredom in the soul.

"I have always believed that the moment of death is the norm and purpose of life ... even when I was a kid, and I thought atheistically and materialistically, I had always a fear: of missing, not my life, but my death."
And to achieve this result, it takes a lifetime of training.

The workers were listening. In silence. With the respect that you have for the one who seems to want to reveal to us a big secret. The secret of life. While she was speaking. Speaking and smoking.
Who said that smoking is bad?

Ho incontrato Simone Weil

L’ho voluta incontrare.

Era in un bar, a parlare a degli operai, arrotolandosi le sigarette e fumando di continuo.

Le ho rubato pezzi di pensieri, di visione, di passione, di parole forti e senza scampo, che dicevano:

                                                                 

Scrivere il più possibile: imparare a scrivere bene significa imparare a pensare bene. Lo scrivere può essere più onesto del parlare, perché non ha da tener conto del pubblico, dell’altro.

Il pensiero è da intendersi come lavoro. Come lo scrivere, il dipingere, il comporre musica: lavoro. Come il costruire, il dare forma. S’impara, e si arriva a dei risultati, come si impara a fare il fabbro, unicamente facendo.

E per fare bisogna essere liberi.

Essere veramente liberi significa agire secondo la volontà, e non abbandonarsi al desiderio e alla passione, che rendono schiavi.

La volontà non si manifesta né nell’intenzione, né nella decisione, ma unicamente nell’azione.

Avere con i Grandi e con le loro opere un rapporto di consuetudine quotidiana: leggerle, rileggerle, impararle. Le grandi opere d’arte parlano il linguaggio dell’assoluto, della bellezza, che risveglia il pensiero e guida l’uomo verso la verità di se stesso.

Tutti debbono muoversi verso questa bellezza, per costruire l’autonomia della propria mente. L’uomo deve superare se stesso. Occorre avere in sé l’idea che bisogna cambiare, trasformarsi.

Non basta volere per avere. Non si può avere direttamente.

Ma bisogna agire perché avvenga, e per far questo è necessario avere davanti agli occhi la propria vita e decidere di farne qualcosa, orientarla in un determinato senso della volontà e del lavoro.

E’ l’impegno totale, l’azione intera, che coinvolge corpo e anima, che non lascia margini.

Bisogna decidere per se stessi, costi quello che costi; non si ha diritto di porsi sotto l’autorità di un altro. Serve un maestro, che è tale solo se insegna a cercare la verità attraverso la propria vita.

La conoscenza. E’ un’opera del pensiero. Deve poter salvare dall’azione irruenta (emozione), dalla fumosa immaginazione, dall’accesa opinione, dalla violenza.

L’attenzione come nutrimento essenziale per il pensiero. Il pensiero come spinta massima alla attenzione.

Vivere il pensiero come attenzione ad un compito fatto di momenti collegati ad un fine preciso, porta alla coscienza della funzione liberatrice del pensiero.

La definizione concreta di libertà si ha quando il pensiero dell’azione precede l’azione.

La comprensione del proprio operare e percezione della sua utilità procurano all’uomo il sentimento del creare.

L’arte è conoscenza. O meglio l’arte è esplorazione.

Il trionfo dell’arte è condurre ad altro da sé: alla vita.

Il tempo è l’immagine stessa della necessità; per questo va accettato in tutti i suoi momenti con consapevolezza.

Non rimandare le cose. Non sottomettersi ciecamente ad esse, non sfuggirvi con l’incoscienza. Bisogna cominciare con la fedeltà ai piccoli compiti.

La vita può e deve essere più reale e piena. Non la mutilare in anticipo con una qualsiasi rinuncia. Non ti lasciar imprigionare da nessun affetto. Preserva la tua solitudine. Se mai verrà un giorno che una “vera” amicizia ti sia concessa, non esisterà opposizione tra la solitudine interiore e l’amicizia. E’ da questo segno infallibile che la riconoscerai.

L’amicizia non va cercata, né sognata, né desiderata.

L’amicizia la si esercita. E’ una virtù.

Il dolore e la bellezza riescono a condurci fuori dalla caverna verso la vera Luce; ma questa uscita altro non è che l’acquisizione della capacità di leggere la molteplicità di significati della simbologia del reale. Bellezza e dolore si sovrappongono e si confondono.

L’unica liberazione possibile ha luogo attraverso l’obbedienza alla necessità.

L’attenzione a tutte le fasi di una “esperienza” che ti costa sofferenza, e il coraggio di affrontarle, creano in te la “forza d’animo”. Usata così, la sofferenza, diventa fattore di formazione e di addestramento.

La noia è una malattia dell’anima. Per cui in tutti gli aspetti della vita sociale, in tutti i momenti del vivere, è necessaria una certa dose di rischio, che impegni le risorse dell’anima ed eserciti il coraggio. Così si vince e si estirpa la noia dall’anima.

“Ho sempre creduto che l’istante della morte sia norma e scopo della vita… anche quando ero bambina, e mi credevo atea e materialista, ho provato sempre un timore: quello di mancare, non la mia vita, ma la mia morte.”

E per raggiungere questo risultato, ci vuole tutta una vita di addestramento.

Gli operai la  ascoltavano. In silenzio. Con il rispetto che si ha per chi sembra volerci trasmettere un grande segreto. Il segreto del vivere. Mentre lei parlava. Parlava e fumava.

Chi l’ha detto che fumare fa male?

“LA PASSIONE DELLA CONOSCENZA”

Incontri culturali di conoscenza e di approfondimento di personaggi dell’Arte e

del Pensiero, di movimenti artistici,

di tematiche esistenziali.

·       A COSA SERVE L’ARTE?

L’Arte non è forse il più grande insegnamento per comprendere cos’è la vita?

Domenica 4 Novembre 2012

·           IL ROMANTICISMO ESISTE ANCORA?  

Le immagini, la musica, la poesia di quel movimento sono ancora presenti e determinanti per la nostra sensibilità e sentimento?

Domenica 18 Novembre 2012

·            L’ARTE DI COMUNICARE

La difficoltà di comunicare oggi……. nel tempo della modernità.

Domenica 2 Dicembre 2012

·            PASOLINI….MI MANCHI!!!!

Ci manca la tua disperata vitalità, le tue nuvole,  le tue parole corsare.

Domenica 16 Dicembre 2012

Ingresso libero, su prenotazione – Orario: Ore 16 - 18

Tessera associativa annuale € 10

Per informazioni e prenotazioni:

Associazione artistico-culturale ALETHEIA

Via Bertelli, 16 – 20127 Milano

Tel.  02.28.96.423 – associazioneculturalealetheia@gmail.com

Man asks, art answers

To whom to ask? To whom to ask how to face our own loneliness, our missing of sense, our fear? There is a possibility that we probably do not consider, or to which we don’t give real importance, that in fact it has. This possibility is Art.

What is Art? Art is the essence of the souls. And to whom to ask other then to this concentration of souls? Souls of the humanity. The concentration of the greatest souls of the humanity. All the history of humanity. On the shoulders of the giants.

Let’s start to listen to one music of Bach. For sure this music is speaking about our theme. Our personal theme, existential, about our original question.  But in another language…. that we have to let us listen to..

It is possible to imagine ourselves. And, at the same time, to listen to this music, to ask to Art, but Art is already speaking to us, about us. Imagining ourselves in the condition of the artist. To feel his feelings. And to catch that voice that for sure was suffering like us, and that, with his capability to see, is now telling something to us, using his language. And he (the poet) said this to the world…

For the human being in absolute sense… let’s try to listen…. for listening.

First the listening, then the reading of us and inside of us.. Here there is something important that is speaking to me. What is Art? What is Art? It is the greatest soul of humanity. Probably nobody told us what art is. Art: all the souls of mankind. Collected in some human beings, who had an extraordinary sensibility and who were able to express such concentration in their works, in their visions and words.

Probably nobody told us, probably our parents didn’t say to us: “I am sorry, I didn’t know, but I can indicate for you a kind of solution, a kind of medicine, for you, for the life that you will have to face. I am not able. Me too I was not able to ask and find the answers during my life. But I discovered something, and I have to tell you: there is Art. I will die, but you will never be alone, because there is Art!!”

To whom to ask how to live, how to die, if there is a sense, if there is a God?

One day I will die, but Art will stay. It must be your guide.. And maybe that’s why we have a soul. Potentially a kind of container, not only, a kind of factory where is possible to put Art, the raw material for excellence of our spiritual “production” and, consequently, of the quality of our existence. Art that only the soul can catch, listening, looking, feeling the soul of mankind, to put it in our soul.

But we don’t do it. Maybe nobody told us. Nobody taught us.

Painters, musicians, poets, writers, sculptors. We think that Art is in relation only with beauty, in the sense to transmit beauty, an ideal beauty. But there is in Art something else, that is not just beauty in esthetical sense. Beauty which produces pleasure.

Actually Art has inside the history of humankind. History in absolute sense, not just of a specific moment, of a specific kind of people. Art is absolute, by definition.

Maybe too often we are sure of what life is, or even if we are not sure, we behave as we knew. And so we find ourselves immersed into the life, entangled to it, and after we found ourselves speaking about loneliness, emptiness and non-sense.

We have to ask. We are too much sure, too much involved in the life, and we forget to stay in our condition and to ask and to search. To try to listen. In this music there is a vision. There is an absolute vision, but there is also something more specific that we have to be able to listen, as to listen to an old broken tree, that, through its wounds and its new fresh leaves, says something to me.

To say the experience of many centuries of humanity…. Art. With what can we feed our soul thirsty of answers? Our soul has no limits. It can enter, can include, can see all the visions, all the worlds, all the languages, just listening. Listening in silence, like with this music, to listen to what is answering to our conscious and unconscious questions.

Art is not only a kind of consolation, for the sad moments. It is not a beautiful and tender mother, no, it is not this. If it is a real mother, she also slaps me because I am resigned. Art is a cruel mother. But a mother must be also cruel. Cruel in a special way. To reveal to me what reality is, without telling me fairytales.

Listen to Art, ask Art, and you will never be alone. It is not possible to oblige someone to have faith, but maybe it is harder to have faith in God, because we have to keep believing in something that is not visible  in the reality, and sometimes neither so understandable in its designs.

But with Art it is different.

And maybe it’s right Art that can help us in this different relationship with God. Because Art speaks about Absolute, is full of answers, concrete answers, disinterested. In this way I can trust somebody, somebody that is always ready to give to me, to tell me. In any moment I can call him, look at him, listen to him, ask him. Maybe with God it’s less possible, sometimes he looks too busy, he doesn’t answer directly to me. But maybe he does it through Art. Because Art is always present, in books, in paintings, in melodies. And if I ask, even God, Art answers. Always.

(from a presentation at the seminar “Journey of a soul and a poetry”, held by Aletheia in Santa Libera, Piemonte, Italy, September 2012)