Letter 17: THE STAR

"...it is he who, in spite of thorns,
Envy and derision,
Walks, bent under your remains,
Gathering tradition.
From fertile tradition
Comes all that covers the world,
Everything that heaven can bless.
Every idea, human or divine,
Which is rooted in the past,
Has its foliage in the future."
(Victor Hugo, "Fonction du poète")

"One cannot pass by poetry if one attaches value to tradition. The whole of the Bible breathes poetry -- epic, lyric and dramatic -- and likewise the Zohar is full of poetry…
     Let us therefore love poetry and respect the poets. For it is not dukes, margraves and counts who constitute the true nobility of mankind, but rather the poets. One is noble (in the sense of the "nobility of the heart") in so far as one is a poet at heart. And since every human soul is in principle a priest, a nobleman and a worker at one and the same time, let us not smother the nobility within us by an overestimation of practical aims or by a preoccupation with our salvation, but on the contrary let us ennoble our work and our religion by bringing in the breath of poetic inspiration." --VT

"Poet"
oil on paper  15"x22"