花香馥缕

56. Truly profound thinkers and highly creative artists are always out of step with their time and their society.

What is so great about truly profound thinker and highly creative artists? I don’t think we can necessarily say that it’s because, as the speaker claims, they are always out of step with their time and their society. For me, it is the things they think which is not restricted to time and therefore last forever and throughout history, that make them so remarkable and remembered.

In the first place, on its very basis, it’s difficult to make a definition about weather or not someone is out of the step with their time and their society. Or perhaps the public opinion and the society of his time can act as some kind of standard and whoever disaccord with the standard but in accord with the future standard will be called stepping out with their time and their society. A case in point will undoubtedly be Vincent Van Gogh, using his painting brush to express his emotion and attitude to the society, which was unaccepted and untolerated by his contemporaries. The failure of Van Gogh during his lifetime may be attributed to the fact that he was so many years ahead of his society.

If that is the case, which is to say, if the public opinion and the society are indeed the standard judging people on their accordance with the society, then how to explain the greatness of Shakespeare and his achievement during his time? Shakespeare is widely admired for the reason that his works, the problems that he tried to raise and the ways he thought were closely related to the society he lived, which, in another way to say, is in accord with the social standard. However, I doubt that anyone will consider Shakespeare to be not out of step and that anyone will deny the fact that he is an exceptional of the history. Shakespeare was insightful in pointing some social phenomena, which made him appeal to his contemporaries, but, at the same time, it’s for the reason that he brought up some forever problems on human nature that made him the truly profound thinker.

The mutual greatness about Van Gogh and Shakespeare lies in the truth that what create and what they think is forever lasting and will never fade. Van Gogh, the most talented artist in my heart, brought up an important problem on human emotion and put a big question mark on the value of art; Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” problem point directly to human nature and his Romeo and Juliet story arouse people’s thinking on love and romance. Emotion, art, human nature and love, these are the problems that we human being have been trying forever to understand and truly profound thinkers and highly creative artists like Shakespeare and Van Gogh have been trying to explain these problem with their own experience, their thought and even their own life. Only with them can we be provoked to think and only with them that time flows on and on as a whole.

All in all, it would be too shallow to judge thinkers and artists, especially truly profound thinkers and artists, with the limit of time, for those remarkable things they think and create which is unrestricted by time. Indeed, they may be out of step with their time and their society, but at the same time, they are not out of step with their time and their society, because history, as a whole, is immersed with their thoughts and deeds. 

自己觉得还不错，可惜离题了。