Dec
11th
Tue
11th
2007
It is one thing to work with color and sounds,” Sartre writes, “another to express oneself by means of words. Notes, colors and forms are not signs.” The primary significance of music and visual art, then, is self-contained. Even an artist who paints houses, Sartre writes, “makes them, that is, he creates an imaginary house on the canvas and not the sign of a house. And the house which thus appears preserves all the ambiguity of real houses.” By contrast, “the writer deals with meaning.” Words are tools used to convey a message, no matter how neutral the message is. When words are treated instead as ends in themselves, Sartre believes, the result is poetry. “Poets are men who refuse to utilize language.” On the other hand, “The empire of signs is prose.
