{"id":3636,"date":"2023-08-06T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T23:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/katherine-anne-porter-on-the-power-of-the-artist-and-the-function-of-art-in-human-life-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-08-06T19:09:08","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T23:09:08","slug":"katherine-anne-porter-on-the-power-of-the-artist-and-the-function-of-art-in-human-life-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/katherine-anne-porter-on-the-power-of-the-artist-and-the-function-of-art-in-human-life-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art in Human Life \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"What<\/a><\/p>\n

When the dust of the centuries settles, what is left of every civilization are not its dogmas and its ideologies, not its reasons for going to war, but its arts \u2014 those emblems of our search for meaning, reaching for a reality realer than fact, deeper than doctrine; those records of our reckoning with what the world is and what it can be; those supreme revelations of who and what we are. Rebecca West understood this when she wrote in her exquisite meditation on storytelling and survival<\/a> that \u201cart is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.\u201d Saul Bellow understood it when he insisted in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech<\/a> that \u201conly art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides \u2014 the seeming realities of this world,\u201d while a more genuine reality is \u201calways sending us hints, which without art, we can\u2019t receive.\u201d Toni Morrison understood it when she observed<\/a> that \u201cart reminds us that we belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The writer and activist Katherine Anne Porter<\/strong> (May 15, 1890\u2013September 18, 1980) understood it uniquely, having lived through two World Wars and tremendous upheavals, making art \u2014 poems and essays, short stories and novels \u2014 that made life richer and more livable for generations.<\/p>\n

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