We already touched upon the question of whether or not there is an ''art'' as such, that is art beyond works of art. Let's explore some more phenomena. We assumed there must paradoxically exist some generic thought patterns, some ideas representing art. They work as engines producing thoughts, new ideas and forms of their expression, people's interest in and understanding of all those new elements of humanity, and even new human behavior.
How does it happen? Any and all ideas become most refined and developed when they are fixed into a form, a work. After that they may play an "instructive" role, either by staging examples to follow, or even by being taught. But, the most important role of a work of culture is not to be an example to follow or learn. It is to provoke another creator to create. It could provoke and invoke a desire to understand, or to follow, to go further, to argue, to criticize, generally speaking, to induce another dialogue. All this relates to the audience as well.
Let us take, for example, the so-called ''culture of groups.'' Whatever their art forms are and on whatever level, it is important to stress that these forms have been and are being created. After the creation happens, the "added culture" spreads into the vernacular, gets fixed in the written language, rituals, clothes, meals, and so forth... and, sooner or later it fires back, that is new works of art appear. These new works reflect the new stage of the group and promote new forms of life. Novelty is a characteristic of culture ,and because of that, culture is exclusively the human way of life.
Once again, culture is born of works of art, gives birth to works of art, but is not the same as the sum of those works. Even if we add ideas, names, literary personages, genres, theories, methods, schemes... this will not add up to the entirety of culture. It is so, simply because many different works may represent the same culture. For example, the works of Aristotle and Plato belong to the culture of Antiquity. But what is the culture of Antiquity? It is one represented by works of Plato, Aristotle and many others. How can such different works represent the same thing? Culture appears to be an engine producing works, which, in turn, develop the culture. We revolve within this and other paradoxes of human ways all the time. We can neither avoid it, nor change it.
The paradox between culture and its works is analogous to the paradox between thought and speech. Thought and speech are not one and the same: you may express the same thought in different ways. On the other hand, there is not a thought beyond speech: you have no means to comprehend the thought without verbalizing it. Both halves of this paradox have been brilliantly grasped by Russian poets:
Osip Mandelshtam:
I have forgotten the word, that I desired to say
And a fleshless thought returns to Shadow Palace
Fyodor Tyutchev:
The thought that has been said, is false.
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