March 5, 2014

the atmosphere of craftsmanship (1936)


Ain Sakhri lovers figurine (British Museum)
The intellectual picture of the atmosphere of craftsmanship from which the storyteller comes has perhaps never been sketched in such a significant way as by Paul Valéry: “This patient process of Nature was once imitated by men. Miniatures, ivory carvings, elaborated to the point of greatest perfection, stones that are perfect in polish and engraving, lacquer work or paintings in which a series of thin transparent layers are placed one on top of the other – all these products of sustained, sacrificing effort are vanishing, and the time is past in which time did not matter. Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated. . . . It is almost as if the decline of the idea of eternity coincided with the increasing aversion to sustained effort.”

Paul Valéry, cited by Walter Benjamin (1936)