Quotes from Norbert Elias

Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.

I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity.

The peculiarity of innovative fantasies in the form of works of art is that they are fantasies kindled by material which is accessible to many people. In a word, they are de-privatised fantasies. That sounds simple, but the whole difficulty of artistic creation shows itself when someone tries to cross this bridge — the bridge of de-privatisation. It could also be called the bridge of sublimation.

In other words, the more differentiated, relatively developed societies have cultivated a comparatively high tolerance for highly individualised ways of further developing the existing art canon; this facilitates experimentation and the breaching of stale conventions and can thus help to enrich the artistic pleasures available through seeing and hearing.

T]he social canons and methods by which people build up instinct controls in their communal life are not brought into being deliberately; they evolve over long periods, blindly and without plan. Irregularities and contradictions in drive-controls, huge fluctuations in their severity or leniency, are therefore among the recurrent structural features of the civilizing process.

Unlike dream ideas, those of the artist are attuned both to the material and to society. They are a specific form of communication, intended to elicit applause, resonance of a positive or negative kind, to arouse jor or anger, clapping or booing, love or hate.

The libidinal fantasy-stream only becomes significant for other people, i.e. capable of mediation, if it is socialised through fusion with the canon, while at the same time energizing and individualizing the canon or the conscience.

Tässä kommunistien ja kapitalistien näkemykset käyvät yksiin: molemmat ajattelevat saman paradigman mukaisesti, että talous on jokaisen yhteiskunnan keskeisin alue. Itse en ole samaa mieltä. Hitaasti hiipivä identiteettikriisi, joka liittotasavaltaa on kohdannut, on vähintään yhtä vaarallinen.

In the course of the changing relationship between those who produce art and those who need and buy it, the structure of art changes, not its value.

De um modo geral, as vítimas da história, os grupos menos poderosos que foram derrotados, têm tido apenas uma pequena oportunidade de serem recordados. O principal quadro de referência do que é recordado como história continua sendo até hoje um Estado, e os livros de história ainda são, sobretudo, crônicas de Estados.

As pessoas que estão preparadas para usar a violência e o homicídio como instrumentos normais de política nunca podem sentir-se livres do medo de que outros possam recorrer aos mesmos instrumentos contra eles.

The pinnacle of artistic creation is achieved when the spontaneity and inventiveness of fantasy-stream are so fused with knowledge of the regularities of the material and the judgement of the artist's conscience that the innovative fantasies emerge as if by themselves in a way that matches the demands of both material and conscience. This is one of the most socially fruitful types of sublimation process.

A] person is not an artist in one compartment and a human being in another.

W]e must add at once that a judgement on Mozart's verbal coprophilia would necessarily miss the mark if it applied present-day standards of civilization, thus implicitly regarding our own canon of sensibility as universal, a canon for the whole mankind, and not as one that has developed. To do justice to Mozart's tendency, we need to have a clear idea of the civilizing process in the course of which the social canon of behavior and feeling changes in a specific way.

The split in his social existence made itself felt in his personality structure as well. Mozart's entire musical activity, his whole training as a virtuoso performer and composer, were shaped by the music canon of the hegemonic court societies of Europe. [...] At the same time, in his personality structure, especially as far as his social relations were concerned, he remained a man of the petty bourgeois ...

In giving latitude to his individual fantasy, and especially to his ability to synthesise previously separate elements in a way which breaches the existing canon of taste, he initially reduces his chance of finding resonance in the public. [...] In this respect, too, without realizing it, Mozart had inaugurated another shift in the balance of power.

Se uma nação varre os seus crimes para debaixo do tapete, aumenta o risco de repeti-los e perpetua a falsa imagem de si mesma, a qual é suscetível de distorcer as suas outras percepções.

Ruling groups of every type...whose power is dwindling seldom vacate the field without a fight even if the chances of maintaining their power and rule may be nil. The weaker they are...the crasser, the more reckless and unrealistic...are the measures likely to be with which they seek to preserve their position.

Os vivos comunicam-se mutuamente numa linguagem que, em grande medida, foi moldada pelos mortos. Assim, os mortos se vingam dos vivos por violarem seus valores.

However, the power difference between economic establishments and outsiders in societies where there is a fairly free market for supply and demand and even, in some areas, for professional appointments, is much less than that between absolute rulers or their councillors and their court musicians — even though artists who were famous and à la mode could take some liberties.

Continuidades de uma tradição nacional de atitudes e comportamento, de uma "mística nacional", reforçadas através da repetição de experiências nacionais similares, constituem poderoso determinante de comportamento real.

Mozart experienced the fundamental ambivalence of the bourgeois artist in court society, which can be summed up by the following dichotomy: identification with the court nobility and its taste; resentment of his humiliation by it.

We certainly get a more complete and well-rounded picture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — at court and in the church — if we bear in mind that music still had much of the character of a craft, and that especially in the court sphere it was marked by a very sharp social inequality between the art producer and the patron.

Embora a auto-imagem de uma nação possa variar consideravelmente de geração para geração, e de estrato social para estrato social, mesmo se a compararmos com as imagens correspondentes de outras nações, pode-se reconhecer com muita clareza a continuidade e a diferenciação no desenvolvimento de cada uma delas.