“The Basic Intention of All Artistic Endeavors”
Painting by John Diamond, M.D.
Wordsworth “believed with Coleridge that
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
For Wordsworth everything worth having had its origin in love.”*
This is what I too believe. That all artistic endeavors, whatever the particular modality, must have as its basic Intention to love, to heal: to manifest Jen into our troubled world.
* J. R. Sutherland, Wordsworth and Pope: Warton Lecture on English Poetry (London: H. Milford, 1944), p. 8.
