Martin Buber (1878-1965), was a Jewish professor of philosophy, a reviver of the mystic Hasidism and an authority on dialogue. He studied art in his youth and we find in his classical and very beautiful "I and Thou" (1958) some thoughts about art that I would like to share for the beauty of it.

"...This is the external source of art: a man is faced with a form which desires to be made through him into a work. This form is no offspring of his soul, but is an appearance which steps up to it and demands of it the effective power. The man is concerned with an act of his being. If he carries it through, if he speaks the primary word out of his being to the form which appears, then the effective power streams out, and the work arises. The act includes a sacrifice and a risk. This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form. For everything which just this moment in play ran through the perspective must be obliterated, nothing of that may penetrate the work. The exclusiveness of what is facing it demands that it be so. This is the risk: the primary word can only be spoken with the whole being. He who gives himself to it may withhold nothing of himself. The work does not suffer me, as do the tree and the man, to turn aside and relax in the word of it; but it commands. If I do not serve it aright it is broken, or it breaks me. I can neither experience nor describe the form which meets me but only body it forth. And yet I behold it, splendid in the radiance of what confronts me, clearer than all the clearness of the world which is experienced. I do not behold it as a thing among the "inner" things nor as an image of my "fancy", but as that which exists in the present. If test is made of its objectivity the form is certainly not "there". Yet what is actually so much present as it is? And the relation in which I stand to it is real, for it affects me, as I affect it. To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover. In bodying forth I disclose. I lead the form across - into the world of it. The work produced is a thing among things, able to be experienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its whole embodied form."

I just love this book. There is something delicious yet down to earth that delights me in ways not easily found elsewhere. It is strange, it needs pondering, some sentences and passages seems muddy and then all of a sudden a revelation come and I see clearer than before and I know it is not his or that’s’ writing or thoughts that are obscure but that is all on my own behalf and shortcomings - my perception was blurred and sidetracked until the moment of insight or clarity came through the meeting with the text, creating a merge of intellectual and emotional delight I can feel in a physical way in my body as a release. And after such a moment I can create better, see clearer, I feel more energized - it is a delving into the soul through time that leave my senses refreshed and focused.

Ah. Almost forgot. I bought this book 2nd hand on internet through Amazon and when it arrived I found a personal note inside… “Mariane, Thank you for your order. God bless you! Peggy, The Uncommon Book”. I’ve kept the note. I felt the blessing. Still makes me feel warm. Thank you, Peggy, and bless you too!