The Umbilical Cord Is Not Yet Cut

"I think that the rationalization of the vision of things rooted in the work of art is like the demasking of actors. It is the end of the game, it is the impoverishment of the question of the work. Not because art is an anagram with a hidden key; philosophy is this same anagram––solved. The difference is more profound. In the work of art the umbilical cord is not yet cut that joins it to the whole of the problem. The blood of the mystery is still circulating; the ends of the vessels escape into the surrounding night and return full of a dark fluid. In a philosophical interpretation we now have only extracted an anatomical specimen for an entire problem."

In a letter from Bruno Schulz to his friend Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, as quoted in Regions of the Great Heresy by Jerzy Ficowski (W. W. Norton 2003)

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