All of which harkens back to Nietzsche’s famous statement in The Birth of Tragedy: “Art is not an imitation of nature but its metaphysical supplement, raised up beside it in order to overcome it.” All works of art are founded on a certain distance from the lived reality which is represented. This “distance” is, by definition, inhuman or impersonal to a certain degree; for in order to appear to us as art, the work must restrict sentimental intervention and emotional participation, which are functions of “closeness.” It is the degree and manipulating of this distance, the conventions of
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