Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West. An abridged edition by
Helmut Werner. English abridged edition prepared by Arthur Helps
from the translation by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York:
oxford University Press c199 [1926, 1928, 1932]. xxxx,415, xvix
IMITATION AND ORNAMENT [102]
All art is expression-language.
This expression is either ornament or imitation. Both are higher
possibilities...
I. Imitation
A.Earlier and more characteristic of race
B.Born of the secret rhythm of all this cosmic
C.Every live religion is an effort of the waking soul to
reach the powers of the world-around. And so too is Imitation which in its most devoted moments is wholly religious
1.Consists in an identity of inner activity between the soul and body "here" and the world around "there" which, ...
become one.
D.Let ourselves go in common song or parade-march or dance
1.creates out of many units one unit of feeling and
expression, a "we"
E.All imitation is in the broadest sense dramatic;
1.drama in movements of brush stroke or chisel
2.melodic curse of song
3.tone of recitation
4.line of poetry
5.the description
6.the dance
F.Only the living can be imitated
1.can be imitated only in movements
2.belongs to time and direction
G.Expresses something by accomplishing itself
H.Possess beginning and end
II.Ornament - does not follow the stream of life but rigidly
faces it
A.Established motives, symbols, impressed upon it
B.Intention not to pretend but to conjure
C.The "I" overwhelms the "Thou."
D.Imitation is speaking with means that are born of the
moment andunreproducible
E.employs a languages emancipated from speaking
1.stock of forms that possess duration and is not at
the merc of the individual
F.Removed from Time
1.pure extension, settled and stable
G.Expresses by presenting itself to the senses as a finished
thing
1.Being as such, wholly independent of origin.
H.Possesses only duration
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