schemes, etc. the result will not add up to the entirety of culture. This is so simply because many different works may represent the same
culture. For example, the works of Aristotle and Plato belong to the
culture of Antiquity. But what is the culture of Antiquity? It is one
represented by works of Plato, Aristotle, and many others. How can
such different works represent the same thing? Culture appears to be
an engine producing works, which, in turn, develop the culture. We
revolve within this and other paradoxes of human ways all the time.
We can neither avoid it nor change it.
The paradox between culture and its works is analogous to the
paradox between thought and speech. Thought and speech are not one
and the same, because you may express the same thought in different
ways. On the other hand, there is not a thought beyond speech; that is,
you have no means to comprehend the thought without verbalizing it.
Both halves of this paradox have been brilliantly grasped by Russian
poets:
I have forgotten the word that I desired to say
And a fleshless thought returns to a hall of shadows.
-Osip Mandelshtam
and
The thought that has been said is false.
-Fyodor Tyutchev
Culture and Humanity
We concluded in the very beginning that every work of real art actually creates a new layer of humanity. Let us list a few points which have been developed thus far and some of the obvious offshoots thereof:
- If a work of art represents a new world and this new world speaks to us, then it invokes new feelings, new language to express ourselves, new views on our relations with one another, etc. Thus, artwork creates new layers of the human way of life or, in other words, new insights on humanity itself.
- It is significant that the relationship of people to works of art is essentially the same as the relationship of people to one another. This means that arts bring about new ways of life.
