Carl Laszlo: Man is nothing

Man is in himself nothing, merely an infinitely small part of the infinite. His world is not the world; his destiny as well as his reason are less than a drop in the bucket. Men are nothing, as persons nothing, as families nothing, as a class nothing, as a people nothing, as humanity nothing. Autonomous independent man is a soap-bubble which every day comes nearer to being burst. Man’s proper estate is ennui; nothing results from man, nothing can be built upon him — he himself lacks a firm basis.
What is finite and transient has relevance only in relation to what is infinite and eternal. Man can make nothing of himself, if he draws only on his own forces, for he is himself nothing and has at his disposal only the illusion of his person and his forces. He can claim no power for himself, for, being meaningless, he has no right of possession over living beings or things. Led astray by humanism and blinded by the belief that man is the center of the universe, he fails to recognize his true place in the order if things. He forgets the basis of his existence, and therefore he must perish.
The anthropomorphic world, the reign of mankind, is near its end. The idolization of man and his resultant despotism, the glorification of the picture he presents of himself and his environment, the “art for art’s sake ” and art through artistry — all that is past. Humanistic autonomy and surrealistic automatism can escape complete destruction only through radical evaluation. As this world comes to an end, man loses his artificially central position. After autonomous man has proven to be a bankrupt conception, he will be forced to recognize that he cannot be identified with the illusory image which he has wantonly created of himself.
Only when he renounces his immeasurable vanity and realizes that he is only an infinitely small part of the infinite, will man find his definitive place. Then the era of ennui, of alienation, the era in which the objective and the human have dominated, will be succeeded by an era in which the essence of things and their correspondence are sought. Man’s grandeur, with its consequences — his disintegration and his enslavement — means decline. His liberation from the ballast of the unbefitting claims made on him, and with that, his entry into a world governed by eternal order, is at hand.

— Carl Laszlo, 1959, “Panderma 4″

Cine e Carl Laszlo?

For me, Carl Laszlo was the most important connoisseur of art. He knew ten years in advance what would become fashionable and wrote some essays which I count among the best I have ever read. Later, when he participated in the art fain in Basel, he published a magazine called “Radar”, which was full of work by prominent New Yorkers from the circle around William Burroughs.

— H.R. Giger

Mai multe informaţii: aici şi aici.

Previziuni sumbre şi o critică dură la adresa umanităţii — totuşi, dincolo de filozofii abstracte… dacă stau puţin şi mă gîndesc… oamenii.. s-au omorît între ei încă de la începuturi, suntem cea mai distructivă specie de pe planetă, nu ştim să ne folosim în mod eficient resursele, avem probleme şi probabil n-o să mai supravieţuim foarte mult timp. Doar noi avem conştiinţa morţii — moartea este un fapt social prin excelenţă. A vorbi despre moarte este totuna, în majoritatea cazurilor, cu a vorbi despre persoana umană. Avem istorie, avem artă, ne mîndrim cu realizările noastre. Se spune că Pămîntul e vechi de peste 4 miliarde de ani — poate că au existat mii de civilizaţii ca ale noastre de-a lungul timpului. Ce ne face pe noi atît de speciali? Nimic, trăim o iluzie. Şi suferim permanent.

Andre Malraux spunea: “Poate că încă de la origine este otrăvită bucuria ce a fost dată singurului animal care ştie că ea nu este veşnică.”

Mă întreb.. toată agitaţia asta are vreun rost? De ce toată lumea vrea să meargă înainte, cu orice preţ? Uneori mi se pare absurd.

~ by blacketernal pe 9 aprilie 2008.