Tuesday, April 21, 2009

kunst für alle

[Ruskin, from Fors Clavigera 7 (1 July 1871), on a report that the Louvre had been set afire in the fighting over the Paris Commune:]

For, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old school – reddest also of the red; and was on the very point of saying so at the end of my last letter; only the telegram about the Louvre's being on fire stopped me, because I though the Communists of the new school, as I could not at all understand them, might not quite understand me. For we Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to everybody, and everybody's property to us; so of course I thought the Louvre belonged to me as much as to the Parisians, and expected they would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message or intimation to that effect ever reached me.

4 comments:

Vance Maverick said...

I like "being an Art Professor". Reddest of the red, maybe -- but no radical egalitarian.

Ed Baker said...

well
the Brits

always
did

have
a

faire
sense

of
humour

eh?

hear. hear.

I guess Ruskin got his (humorous-ness) via
Johnathan Swift ?

(no reply necessary.
as.
rejection is not never
an/the issue

Vance Maverick said...

BTW, that should be "für alle" in the title (unless you mean "art for everything", which seems unlikely).

Mark Scroggins said...

right you are, Vance. Once upon a time, my German was a trifle more idiomatic...