Since age is not a factor that enters into the understanding or appreciation of the keris, according to the lights of those people whose artifacts they are, is there any notion of provenance or continuity of existence which might be a factor in their appreciation?
Art, in the West, seems to have relational linkage to the time in which it was created. Is this at all the case with keris? What factors of aesthetic appreciation are most easily grasped by the western sensibility, that can be used in understanding what a Javanese might sense within a given artifact?
And under what conditions or circumstances are intangible qualities such as "life" or "emptiness" capable of being apprehended? Does this depend on a cultural submersion, or is it rendered sensible absent training and exposure?
I recognise that the ability to formulate a question might not have any correspondence to the possibility of a meaningful answer. Even so, a glancing blow can strike a spark, if conditions are correct.
|