05 May 2013

Meaning, and getting on with it

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.

[...]

“But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!”

Not what he pleases, but what he can.  If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best:  we need not mind how he treats any work of art!  If he be a true man, he will imagine true things:  what matter whether I meant them or not?  They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there!

— Geo McDonald, from the Preface to The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories


Chatting with Marc last night, he's reading about work (and other) habits of famous writers. Some of them, frankly self-destructive.  (Habits, I meant, though really, I suppose it works out the same.)

Went to the Pascha Vigil at the Epiphany, always a great uplift to the soul.

More work soon on The Mystic Trumpeter.
There was blood and a plate of Spätzle,
But just who shot who?
At the Copa, Copacabenna,
The hottest spot north of Vienna . . . .

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