I've like this Denise Levertov translation from an old Toltec poem, since I read int Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin in the 1970s.
The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist: capable, practicing, skillful:
maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.
The true artist: draws out all from his heart,
works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity,
works like a true Toltec, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents;
arranges materials, adorns them, makes them adjust.
The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things,
works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.
It seems to convey an idea of aesthetics as responsibility to the world. The good artist just does things right doing art badly is a form of fraud. I think I'm looking for a kind of universalism. There are universal principles of aesthetics, just that they manifest themselves differently in practice and those impede us from seeing their connections.
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