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Dialogue from Visconti's 1971 film "Death in Venice" (adapted from Thomas Mann's novel of the same name)
G: Gustav; A: Alfred
A: Beautiful? You mean your beauty spiritual concept.
G: But do you deny the artist's ability to create beauty from the spirit?
A: Yes, Gustav, that's exactly what I denied.
G: Well, as you say, the work of our artists is...
A: Work? Seriously! Do you really think that beauty is the product of labor?
G: Yes, I think so.
A: That's how beauty is born! Like this, self-evidently, with complete disregard for your work and mine. It pre-exists in our artist's presets.
A: You are very wrong, my friend, you think of survival, reality as a limitation.
G: Isn't it? Reality only distracts and corrupts us. Sometimes I think, artists are more like hunters in the dark. They don't know what their target is, they don't know if they've hit it. But you can't count on survival to illuminate your target and keep your sights steady. Beautiful and pure works are spiritual interpretations.
A: No! Beauty belongs to the senses. Only for the senses!
G: You can't realize the spirit...you can't realize the spirit with the senses. you can not. Only through total domination of the senses...you can attain...wisdom, truth and human dignity.
A: Wisdom? Human dignity? What's the use of that? Genius is a gift from the gods. No, it is the suffering of the gods. It is the sinful, morbid flame of nature's endowment.
G: I reject the art of evil character.
A: You are wrong! Evil is necessary, it is the meal of genius.
G: You know, Alfred, art is the highest source of education... Artists have to be role models. He must be a model of balance and strength. He cannot be ambiguous.
A: But art is ambiguous. And music is the most ambiguous of all arts. It is ambiguity that makes science. and many more! Listen to this melody...and this one. Interpret them however you want. What you have in front of you is a series of mathematical combinations...unpredictable, endless. You live in a pun heaven more than anyone else...like a calf frolicking in alfalfa.
A: That's not pain, it's fear. Shame is mental pain that you cannot escape. Because you cannot exempt your senses...because you avoid feeling. You are an evader, a hater, a distancer. You are afraid to touch anything directly and sincerely! Because of your strict ethics...you want your demeanor to be as perfect as your music. Every glissando is a depravity and a disaster, leading to irreparable stains.
G: I am defiled!
A: I hope you do! Indebtedness belongs to the senses of the individual...that is just an unforgivable depravity and morbidity. What artist interest? ! Just imagine how boring health can be, especially when the soul is not barren in the body.
G: Anyway, I have found my balance.
A: Unfortunately, art doesn't care about personal morality. Otherwise you become superego, unattainable, incomparable. Tell me, do you know what the foundation of mainstream values is? is mediocre.
III
A: You liar! You amazing scammer! What else do they want me to do for you? Absolutely beautiful. Totally serious. The purity of form! Perfection! Sensory abstraction! It's all gone, without reservation. Nothing! Your music is still being born to be pierced through the mask.
A: They will criticize you, they will condemn you! Wisdom, truth, human dignity. It's all over. Now you have no reason not to walk into the grave with your music. You have the perfect balance. Man and artist have become one, and they have fallen to the bottom at the same time.
A: You don't have chastity, chastity is a gift, not the pain of old age... You are old, Gustav. There is nothing in the whole world... that is more like impurity than impurity like old age.
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