99 Stories of God

33. Irreducible

A much-admired artist was giving a lecture to a large audience. His work was known for its peculiar cold beauty and its intellectual craftsmanship. He was the recipient of many awards and honors. He had received the Academia Nazionale dei Lincei’s Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize as well as the Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales. He was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Education and Culture.

In his own country, he had received awards from the Academy of Achievement, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy. In one year alone, he won the triple crown of appreciation and adulation by racing off with the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

At the point in his lecture where he was saying that the representative element in a work of art is always irrelevant, that for one to appreciate a work of art one must bring to it nothing from life, no knowledge of life’s affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions and desires, he was seized by the most stupefying boredom that he had to leave the stage.