Artist Of The Floating World Quotes

She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.

When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life

…It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity….But I’ve long since lost all such doubts, Ono,’ he continued. ‘When I am an old man, when I look back over my life and see I have devoted it to the task of capturing the unique beauty of that world, I believe I will be well satisfied. And no man will make me believe I’ve wasted my time.

For their kind do not know what it is to risk everything in the endeavor to rise above the mediocre.

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134

We're the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we're the only ones who care now.

If one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is a consolation – indeed, a deep satisfaction – to be gained from this observation when looking back over one’s life.

...we have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever we did, we did at the time in the best of faith. Of course, we took some bold steps and often did things with much single-mindedness; but this is surely preferable to never putting one's convictions to the test, for lack of will or courage.

Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something. #Page: 120

My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.

The best things, he always used to say, are put together of a night and vanish with the morning. What people call the floating world, Ono, was a world Gisaburo knew how to value.

... when people are getting poorer, and children are growing more hungry and sick all around you, it is simply not enough for an artist to hide away somewhere, perfecting pictures of courtesans.

How so much honourable is such a contest, in which one's moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one's purse. #Page: 10

For indeed, a man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if in the end he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions.

For however one may come in later years to reassess one’s achievements, it is always a consolation to know that one’s life has contained a moment or two or real satisfaction

Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.

A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God! O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!

That's what dreams are really like, you know? They're not full of melting clocks or floating roses or people made out of rocks. Most of the time, dreams look just like the normal world. It's your feelings that tell you something's off. Not your mind, not your intellect, not something as obvious as that. The only part of you that really knows what's going on is the part of you that's most a mystery. If that's not Surrealism, I don't know what is.

I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the 'Tortoises' of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in.

yourself wondering

a spider and a fly i heard a spider and a fly arguing wait said the fly do not eat me i serve a great purpose in the world you will have to show me said the spider i scurry around gutters and sewers and garbage cans said the fly and gather up the germs of typhoid influenza and pneumonia on my feet and wings then i carry these germs into households of men and give them diseases all the people who have lived the right sort of life recover from the diseases and the old soaks who have weakened their systems with liquor and iniquity succumb it is my mission to help rid the world of these wicked persons i am a vessel of righteousness scattering seeds of justice and serving the noblest uses it is true said the spider that you are more useful in a plodding material sort of way than i am but i do not serve the utilitarian deities i serve the gods of beauty look at the gossamer webs i weave they float in the sun like filaments of song if you get what i mean i do not work at anything i play all the time i am busy with the stuff of enchantment and the materials of fairyland my works transcend utility i am the artist a creator and demi god it is ridiculous to suppose that i should be denied the food i need in order to continue to create beauty i tell you plainly mister fly it is all damned nonsense for that food to rear up on its hind legs and say it should not be eaten you have convinced me said the fly say no more and shutting all his eyes he prepared himself for dinner and yet he said i could have made out a case for myself too if i had had a better line of talk of course you could said the spider clutching a sirloin from him but the end would have been just the same if neither of us had spoken at all boss i am afraid that what the spider said is true and it gives me to think furiously upon the futility of literature archy

مهما بلغت دقة الفنان في ملء تفاصيل المظهر الخارجي لانعكاس صورته في المرآة، قلما تقترب الشخصية المقدَمة من الحقيقة التي يبصرها الآخرون.

فالإنسان إن أخفق حيثما لم يتحل الآخرون بالشجاعة أو الإرادة للتجريب، يستشعر عزاء بل و قناعة عميقة عند اجتلاء حياته من خلفه.

إنّ همَ الفنان أن يأسر الجمال أينما يجده.

In any case, there is surely no great shame in mistakes made in the best of faith. It is surely a thing far more shameful go be unable or unwilling to acknowledge them.

Of course, it is tragic that so many of his generation died as they did, but why must he harbour such bitterness for his elders?

But tell me, Taro, don’t you worry at times we might be a little too hasty in following the Americans? I would be the first to agree many of the old ways must now be erased for ever, but don’t you think sometimes some good things are being thrown out with the bad? Indeed, sometimes Japan has come to look like a small child learning from a strange adult.

Аз обаче не съм човек, който би позволил собствената му дъщеря да страда само защото той не може да преглътне гордостта си и да приеме истината.

Oji just happened to suggest he had one or two

Something has changed in the character of the younger generation in a way I do not fully understand, and certain aspects of this change are undeniably disturbing.

At times it was almost as it had been years ago, when on a sunny day the family would sit there together exchanging relaxed, often vacuous talk.

NINA Your life is beautiful. TRIGORIN I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!

Es posible que las palabras que dije aquella tarde en el templo de Tamagawa no fueran exactamente éstas, ya que he contado esa escena en otras ocasiones, y cuando una historia se repite varias veces, empieza a adquirir vida propia.

I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the Tortoises of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in.

I could put down a scene from two days ago right beside one from twenty years earlier, and ask the reader to ponder the relationship between the two. Often the narrator himself would not need to know fully the deeper reasons for a particular juxtaposition. I could see a way of writing that could properly suggest the many layers of self-deception and denial that shrouded any person’s view of their own self and past.

Those who sent the likes of Kenji out there to die these brave deaths, where are they today? They're carrying on with their lives, much the same as ever. Many are more succesfull than before, behaving so well in front of the Americans, the very ones who led us to disaster. And yet it's the likes of Kenji we have to mourn. This is what makes me angry. Brave young men die for stupid causes, and the real culprits are still with us. Afraid to show themselves for what they are, to admit their responsibility. [...] To my mind, that's the greatest cowardice of all.

I've been mistaken to assume that in this little village in the spring, so like a dream or a poem, life is a matter only of the singing birds, the falling blossoms, and the bubbling springs. The real world has crossed mountains and seas and is bearing down even on this isolated village, whose inhabitants have doubtless lived here in peace down the long stretch of years ever since they fled as defeated warriors from the great clan wars of the twelfth century. Perhaps a millionth part of the blood that will dye the wide Manchurian plains will gush from this young man's arteries, or seethe forth at the point of the long sword that hangs at his waist. Yet here this young man sits, beside an artist for whom the sole value of human life lies in dreaming. If I listen carefully, I can even hear the beating of his heart, so close are we. And perhaps even now, within that beat reverberates the beating of the great tide that is sweeping across the hundreds of miles of that far battlefield. Fate has for a brief and unexpected moment brought us together in this room, but beyond that it speaks no more.

That while it was right to look up to teachers, it was always important to question their authority.

The truth is, Japan is headed for crisis. We are in the hands of greedy businessmen and weak politicians. Such people will see to it poverty grows every day.

however accurately one may fill in the surface details of one’s mirror reflection, the personality represented rarely comes near the truth as others would see it.

But to be frank, there's much relief around the company. We feel now we can forget our past transgressions and look to the future. It was a great thing our President did.

In fact, it is probably this very quality of Shintaro’s – this sense that he has remained somehow unscathed by things – which has led me to enjoy his company more and more over these recent years.

My mother fell silent for some moments. Then she said: ‘When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.

Let us suppose you give your three-year-old daughter a coloring book and a box of crayons for her birthday. The following day, with the proud smile only a little once can muster, she presents her first pictures for inspection. She has colored the sun black, the grass purple, and the sky green. In the lower right-hand corner, she has added woozy wonders of floating slabs and hovering rings; on the left, a panoply of colorful, carefree squiggles. You marvel at her bold strokes and intuit that her psyche is railing against its own cosmic puniness in the face of a big, ugly world. Later at the office, you share with your staff your daughter's first artistic effort and you make veiled references to the early work of van Gogh. A little child can not do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer. "A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds hi little one close to him, he cared little whether the child is looking around, her attention flittering from one thing to another or just settling down to sleep. Essentially the child is choosing to be with the father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms. Our prayer is much like that. We settle down in our Father's arms, in his loving hands. Our minds, our thoughts, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for this time to remain intimately with our Father, giving ourselves to him, receiving his love and care, letting him enjoy us as he will. It is very simple prayer. It is very childlike prayer. It is prayer that opens us out to all the delights of the kingdom.

Освен това си давахме сметка, че най-важното за поръчаните ни картини – изобразяващи гейши, вишневи дръвчета, плуващи шарани и храмове – е да изглеждат „японски“ на чужденците, за които бяха изнасяни, и дребните детайли, отнасящи се до стила, най-вероятно изобщо няма да бъдат забелязани.

Gisaburo is an unhappy man. He's had a sad life. His talent has gone to ruin. Those he once loved have long since died or deserted him. Even in our younger days, he was already a lonely, sad character" [...] "But then sometimes we used to drink and enjoy ourselves with the women of the pleasure quarters, and Gisaburo would become happy. Those women would tell him all the things he wanted to hear, and for the night anyway, he'd be able to believe them. Once the morning came, of course, he was too intelligent of a man to go on believing such things. But Gisaburo didn't value those night any the less for that. The best things, he always used to say, are put together of a night and vanish with the morning. What people call the floating world, Ono, was a world Gisaburo knew how to value

In an artistic sense, cool came to refer to someone with a signature artistic style so integral as to exude an authentic mode-of-being in the world: Miles, Bogart, Brando, Eastwood, Greco, Elvis, Lady Day, Sinatra. Such a person created something from nothing and gave the world some new artistic or psychological 'equipment for living,' to use a phrase of Kenneth Burke's. A signature style is yours and can only be carried by you: it cannot be abstracted except through dilution and commodification since it reflects an individual's complex personal experience. In this sense, cool was 'making a dollar out of fifteen cents,' to pull another phrase from the Africa-American vernacular. Lester Young was once at a bar when a tenor saxophone solo floated out of the jukebox. 'That's me,' he said happily. As he listened his mood collapsed - he realized it was one of his many imitators. 'No, that's not me,' he said sadly. To steal someone else's sound or style and capitalize on it has always been un-cool, the pretense of posers.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Most immigrants agree that at some point, we become permanent foreigners, belonging neither here nor there. Many tomes have been written trying to describe this feeling of floating between worlds but never fully landing. Artists, using every known medium from words to film to Popsicle sticks, have attempted to encapsulate the struggle of trying to hang on to the solid ground of our mother culture and realizing that we are merely in a pond balancing on a lily pad with a big kid about to belly-flop right in. If and when we fall into this pond, will we be singularly American or will we hyphenate? Can we hold on to anything or does our past just end up at the bottom of the pond, waiting to be discovered by future generations?

Look!” The Khwaja nudged a sleepy Bizhad. What was white before sparkled with a fine glaze of crimson, smearing the ashen tents that housed soldiers and animals inside the fort’s walls, lighting up the city of palaces and mosques, casting a halo over the silent fountains and the imperial boat. One by one, the great doorways of the fort gleamed like mirrors, reflecting the sun, now a spear’s length over the horizon. Marble palaces breathed free of the crisscrossing beams, managing to stand aloof from common homes. The intruder, satisfied by the result, turned an effortless gold – a gold coin floating on the river, at its still centre. A bird called, flew across, reflecting the world on its tiny wings – the lapis sky, the turquoise river, the crimson fort and the golden sun. “Look!” The Khwaja whispered into Bizhad’s ear, tracing its flight with his raised finger. “The finest artist in all Agra!” And so on Saturday the twenty-seventh of Rabi, year 975 of the Hegira, 1568 of the Christian era, the sun lit imperial Agra, blessing every moment and delighting every one of its subjects. It rose for the ten thousandth time since that dawn when Babur, the Mughal invader, had woken after a restful night to find himself the conqueror of Hindustan. Under the western wall of the fort, his grandson, the emperor, was about to rise. Rise and begin his favorite sport – racing elephants when they are in their frightening best. In heat.