Letter 15: THE DEVIL

"Now, it is always excess owing to intoxication of the will and imagination which engenders demons. If...Marx and Engels had simply defended the interests of the industrial workers without having let themselves be carried away by their intoxicated imagination to make statements of universal human significance, and even cosmic significance, such as the statement that God does not exist, that all religion is only the 'opium of the people", that all ideology is only a superstructure on the basis of material interests...they would have been contributors to tradition -- Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and humanist. There is no doubt that with them it was a matter of an excess -- a going beyond the limits of competence and sober and honest knowledge -- which they did not in any way doubt, having been carried away by the intoxicating impulse of radicalism, i.e. by a fever of the will and imagination to change everything utterly at a single stroke. And it is this fever of desire to change everything utterly at a single stroke which gave birth to the demon of class hatred, atheism, disdain for the past, and material interest being placed above all else, which is now making rounds in the world." --VT

"Fever of Desire"
mixed media  30"x40"