The Art of Automutilation

by Theodore Dalrymple (May 2014)

Our distributor of tracts continues, with neo-pagan certainty:

The author ends his tirade, his diatribe, against art as follows:

This irritation with art, or rather with those who claim that art is the whole focus or purpose of their lives when we know perfectly well that the slightest practical inconvenience prostrates them with rage and frustration, is something that I understand and in part share. Nevertheless, there is looseness of thought and insincerity of its own in this little tract.

Those in charge do not accept their ignorance because of their personal dishonesty.

I am for. I am not against. These people force me to show myself against.

His opinion of others, quite apart from the teachers at the Sciences Po, is not very high. Here are a few of his reflections on mankind:

A change of personality is the basis of everything. The only solution.

One suspects that he might be a little lonely:

Man is an individual He is not a couple, a group, a crowd, even if he can pass through these stages.

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