“Judged at the bar of the reality-principle, the consolations of art are childish, and they reinforce mankind’s willful refusal to put away childish things. But if man’s destiny is to change reality until it conforms to the pleasure-principle, and if man’s fate is to fight for instinctual liberation, then art appears, in the words of Rilke, as the Weltanschauung of the last goal. Its contradiction of the reality-principle is its social function, and a constant reinforcement of the struggle for instinctual liberation; its childishness is to the professional critic a stumbling block, but to the artist its glory.”
- Norman Brown, Life Against Death
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