"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

04 May 2013

Dissimilarity.


In order to form and make up a unity, in particular a creative unity, the individual conponents must needs be of different nature, they should even be in a sense contrasts. Two homogenous units will never be capable of forming a whole, or their whole at its best will remain barren. Man and woman become one, and physically and spiritually creative unity, by virtue of their dissimilarity. A hook and eye are a Unity, a fastening, but with two hooks you can do nothing. A right-hand glove with its contrast, the left-hand glove, makes up a whole, a pair of gloves; but two right-hand gloves you throw away. A number of perfectly similar objects do not make up a whole—a couple of cigarettes may quite well be three or nine. A quartet is a Unity because it is made up of dissimilar instruments. An orchestra is a Unity, and may be perfect as such, but twenty-double-basses striking up the same tune are Chaos.

- Isak Dinesen

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