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On the grounds of the interpretation of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry and Paul Cézanne's paintings the book attempts to approach the work of art as a thing. This lets to overcome a one-sided aesthetical interpretation of the origin of the work of art and to indicate its place in the cosmos of uncreated, i.e. not hominized things. So, the second fundamental issue raised is a try to point out a metaphysical difference between a hominized and not hominized (natural) thing. Such a non-aesthetical point of view is called ontotopy by the author and is opposed to traditional ontology and the philosophy of art
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The Thing and Art Two Essays on the Ontotopy of the Work of Art On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics 16 Editor Leonidas Donskis, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, and Director of the Political Science and Diplomacy School at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Editorial and Advisory Board Timo Airaksinen, University of Helsinki, Finland Egidijus Aleksandravicius, Lithuanian Emigration Institute; Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Stefano Bianchini, University of Bologna, Forlì Campus, Italy Endre Bojtar, Central European University; Budapest, Hungary Kristian Gerner, University of Uppsala, Sweden John Hiden, University of Glasgow, UK Mikko Lagerspetz, Estonian Institute of Humanities, Estonia Andreas Lawaty, Nordost-Institut; Lüneburg, Germany Olli Loukola, University of Helsinki, Finland Hannu Niemi, University of Helsinki, Finland Alvydas Nikzentaitis, Lithuanian History Institute, Lithuania Yves Plasseraud, Paris, France Rein Raud, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Estonian Institute of Humanities, Estonia Alfred Erich Senn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania David Smith, University of Glasgow, UK Saulius Suziedelis, Millersville University, USA Joachim Tauber, Nordost-Institut; Lüneburg, Germany Tomas Venclova, Yale University, USA The Thing and Art Two Essays on the Ontotopy of the Work of Art Arvydas Šliogeris Translated from Lithuanian by Robertas Beinartas Introduced by Leonidas Donskis Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009 The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2564-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009 Printed in the Netherlands Contents Introduction by Leonidas Donskis ............................................................ vii I The Thing and Relation in R M Rilke’s Poetry........................................ 1 II P Cézanne and the End of Classical Western Painting ......................... 71 Notes ....................................................................................................... 153 List of Works Cited................................................................................. 155 Introduction Arvydas Šliogeris’s book, The Thing and Art, is a masterpiece of Lithuanian philosophy. It is a piece of rare lucidity, beauty, elegance, theoretical breadth, and philosophical depth. Focused on poetry and painting, it offers a thoughtstimulating, penetrating, and provocative interpretation of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Cézanne. This book, beautifully written, rich in scope and ideas, and eye-opening in profound insights and subtle points concerning the ontology or, in Šliogeris’s parlance, the ontotopy of the work of art, now reaches out to a wider readership and offers here an interpretive framework for the greatest works of classical and modern art. Exaggerated anthropocentrism of our times, and, consequently, a fierce denial of the substance of the thing, which eventually leads to the denial of reality as it is