“The chapters that form the text of this book are related one to the other more by congeneracy and convergence of theme than by continuity of argument. They are all concerned in one way or another with the sacred—either with trying to understand its nature, or with exploring the conditions under which it may be avowed in our life and in our art; or with elucidating the consequences of our failure so to avow it. The concept of a completely profane world—of a cosmos wholly desacralized—is a fairly recent invention of the human mind, while the endeavour to implement it in practical terms by erecting it into the standard according to which we determine the major forms of our social, economic, political and personal life, is still more recent—in fact only now are we becoming aware of the enormity of the self-destruction that it involves. The invention of the concept itself, as well as the endeavour to implement it, presuppose of course that we first blind our intellectual sight with a sacrilegious and hence totally fraudulent notion of the physical universe—with, in other words, the cataract of modern science. That is why the attempt to recover the integrity of our thought and vision must begin with the removal of this opaque secretion—something to which the final chapter is particularly dedicated. But this attempt can lead to a reversal of the present suicidal flow of things only if it is a consequence of and is accompanied by the re-awakening in ourselves of a consciousness of the meaning and presence of the sacred, in all its manifestations. The purpose of this book is to make some slight contribution to such a re-awakening.” —“PREFACE”
CONTENTS
1. Presuppositions of the Sacred 2. The Sacrament 3. The Artist and the Sacred 4. Modern Art and the Heresy of Humanism 5. Art and Originality 6. The Art of the Icon 7. The Art of Transfiguration 8. The Nuptial Mystagogy 9. Vision of the Sacred: the choice before us
Item Number: BKDH908 Publication Data: Limni, Greece: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2004 Format: softcover Number of Pages: viii + 163 Dimensions (l × w × h): 21.4 cm × 13.5 cm × 1.2 cm ISBN: 960‒7120‒18‒3
