José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955)

It really speaks to the power of Ortega y Gasset's prose that one of the most deplorable acts to watch, at least in my experience, is rendered by him as one of the most sublime and invigorating. He describes dog hunting as adding a 'symphonic majesty' to the hunt, with the bright idea of bringing greyhounds, mastiffs, bassets etc. into the fray as being an achievement comparable to the 'discovery of polyphony' in music.

His view communicates the idea that Paleolithic man, who conducted himself as a hunter as a means to an end rather than as a leisurely pursuit, was saturated by instinct and had only brief flareups of primitive reason. Modern man feels a sense of nostalgia concerning this prior state and, in the meantime, remains somewhat resentful of his domestication, so decides to allocate time to an artificial return to it so as to lose himself within the bosom of Nature and demonstrate (through the game of the hunt and his self-imposed limits warranting off undue excess - dynamiting a lake doesn't qualify as hunting) the clear order he manifests in his action as possessing a supremacy over the prey he hunts.

This short book reminds me greatly of a terrible night of hunting I carried out as a boy on the eve of my adolescence. Such an event pretty much consisted of me laying prone in a bush during a deep fog and randomly flashing a torch on and off to see whether or not I would catch a rabbit off guard. I was positively freezing my nuts off in the midst of some poor bastard's aristocratic private estate while my father and his mutual friend wandered off into the woods, maybe he's still in denial, because I definitely heard some strange noises echo throughout that infernal night which belonged to neither fox nor hare. Alas, I begrudgingly shot at a rabbit around an hour or so later and to this day still have no idea if I hit him or not, after this book I wish I had hit that fuzzy little fucker. I don't think anyone felt like they possessed much supremacy that night....… (more)

Scritto nel 1925, parla di quella che allora era "arte nuova" e senza dubbio fa considerazioni che possono essere applicate anche all'arte contemporanea d'oggi. La posizione di Ortega è ambigua nella misura in cui da un lato afferma di non voler affermare la superiorità né dell'arte contemporanea né di quella precedente, dall'altro si tradisce quando descrive la separazione tra volgo ed élite intellettuale (l'unica in grado di capire l'arte contemporanea - e non è difficile credere che lui se ne senta parte). Ci sono senz'altro note corrette e del tutto precorritrici di quanto è poi accaduto, in particolare il carattere intrinsecamente ironico dell'arte contemporanea.
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