Архивът като художествена творба
The Archives as a Work of Art

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to examine the questions of how archives can be looked at as a work of art and of when this can happen. According to a conventional understanding archives are something rather dead than alive, rather material than spiritual. On the other hand, as a thinker once wrote, a work of art is something that a person leaves after himself, something that lasts after the labor. However, what is staying on in the time is not the thing itself; it is not the sheet of paper, or the canvas. It is more than this. Just the same is the case with archives. It is exactly this “more than” that makes it possible for us to comprehend the archives of a composer, a writer, a painter etc. as a work of art. Part of this possibility is due to the man of creativity whose archives we read. The other part (the lesser indeed) depends on us. It depends on our ability to let this “more than” to appear, or, to put it in other words, to revive it by letting ourselves to be involved into it – into the spirit in the body of archives – and thus to grasp their message.

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