Name: Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums
Author: Karel Čapek

Quotes from Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (Karel Čapek)

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ If you search in the London collections for ivory carvings or embroidered tobacco pouches, you will find them; if you search for the perfection of human work, you will find it in the Indian museum and the Babylonian gallery, in the Daumiers, Turners, and Watteaus, or in the Elgin marbles. But then you leave this accumulation of all the world’s treasures and you can ride for hours and miles on the top of a bus from Ealing to East Ham, and from Clapham to Bethnal Green; and you will scarcely find a place where your eye could derive pleasure from the beauty and lavishness of human work. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ I tell you, this is a dreadful thing; dreadful is the relativity of culture and history; nowhere behind us or before us is there a point of rest, of an ideal, of the finish and perfection of man; for it is everywhere and nowhere, and every spot in space and time where man has set up his work is unsurpassable. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ Art is what is deposited behind glass in galleries, museums and in the rooms of rich people; but it does not move about here in the streets, it does not twinkle from the handsome cornices of windows, it does not take up its stand at the street-corner like a statue, it does not greet you in a winsome and monumental speech. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ This is the only lesson to be learnt from the history, cultures, collections and treasures of the whole world: create like savages, create perpetually; at this spot, in this moment, the acme of perfection of human work is to be created; it is necessary to mount as high as fifty thousand years ago or as in the Gothic Madonna, or as in that stormy landscape by Constable. If there are ten thousand traditions, there is no tradition at all; nothing can be selected from all-abundance ”

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Source: Wikisource

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ I now should assuredly be very learned about various styles and cultures; I should relate something about the stages in the development of art; in my head I should sort out and distribute all this material, which is here exhibited for wonderment and instruction. But instead of this I have rent my garment, and I ask: Where is the perfection of man? How dreadful that it is everywhere; how awful a discovery to find the perfection of man even at the very beginning of existence ”

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Source: Wikisource

Karel Čapek, Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (1925)

“ I saw so many things, and I could have chosen; very well, then, I will tell you that I do not know whether man is more perfect, more advanced or more attractive when shaping the first urn than when decorating a splendid Portland vase; I do not know which is more perfect: to be a cave-man, or to be an Englishman in the West End ”

Karel Čapek

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Quotes from Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (Karel Čapek)

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Karel Čapek

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Quotes from Letters from England — The Pilgrim Goes Over More Museums (Karel Čapek)

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