In an Anthropology Conference held in Belgium, everybody agreed to name the twentieth century, 'The Century of Anxiety.' Why? All of the different considerations in various areas and occasions which I have mentioned here exist, and yet, it is undeniable that today's human being has more knowledge and is more conscious than in the past.

In Durkheim's words, the 'I' has appeared in contemporary man, meaning that the individual has developed, whereas the man of the past was a being living within the fabric of nature. The sap of life and nature were running in his veins and he was nurtured by it. By means of that sap, he was fostered, grew and found peace and order. But the lonely human being of today? But why lonely? Being with everyone? Is this the only need that a human being has? Which need? The need which comes about when an individual understands what he or she should be and is not. This need is constantly increasing. It reaches the state of more knowledge, consciousness and world consciousness and the need finally becomes independent from nature. At the same time that he knows that nature is a house that is shared with the animal and vegetable kingdom, he also knows it lacks something.

He needs to have the world sense him. The more lonely the human being becomes, the more alienated he feels. What Camus says is that contemporary man is alienated from everything. This alienated man feels closeness and familarity more than ever and he needs to feel familiarity, yet his family and the world are more than ever alienated from him. He senses in his nature, and in the depth of his thoughts that all boundaries will end when his feelings find continuation in this world.

Existence accepts death. But his feelings will continue. He weighs what exists with his spiritual and transcendent needs. He sees that he does not get enough and feels alienated.

This problem of alienation is not only a metaphysical problem. The alienation which Sartre, Camus and Heideger talk about is something which gives existence to art.

Science is the struggle of man to know what exists. Technique and industry are defined as: the means and the mental struggle of human beings for benefitting from as much as is possible of that which is. But art consists of the struggle of human beings for benefits which should exist, but do not. Therefore, the human being who sees himself alone, wants to set up, through art, a relationship with this earth and sky or with the objects which he is alienated from because they are not the same kind as he. He wants to color them with familiarity and understanding.

Thus, one of the things that art does is to help decrease the feeling of alienation of the conscious human being who has fled and alienated himself. How? It allows him to decorate the walls of his prison in the image of the house he wishes he was in and isn't. These objects, this sky, these stars and mountains do not understand him. He is left alone, stone-like and blind among all these objects. Art gives feelings to all these objects.

Our poetry is a perfect example. What most of our poems do is to reconcile the lonely poet with the crowd. This man who is lonely becomes understood through a candle. Art changes the candle into an acquaintance which feels the poet's animosity. Art sees the sun rise not as a revolution of the earth and sky but in a way that makes the sun suddenly appear in the sky. This does not fulfill his needs, but it is like a message from a friend. In this artistic deception, his feelings of alienation and separation from objects in nature becomes refined. Art also does something else. It allows the artist to make and create in the world something that does not exist in nature, but 'he needs it to be'.

The art of the past was kept at the level of imitating nature. Plato said, 'Art is the imitation of nature.' If art is imitating nature, then Plato's words are clear. Art is a game. It is deceitful and false. A man who has realities at his disposal must be made to simulate them. Would anyone simulate water? Where there is water, why should there be its imitation ? Plato may be right in thinking that it is only a game and all in vain, but I understand it quite differently.

Art is imitating precisely what is beyond the tangible, beyond nature, in order to decorate nature in its image, or to make something the human being wants to be in nature and does not find. It is there to fulfill his feelings of need and agitation, loneliness and most of all, his need to transcend, that is, separate himself from tangible, material needs.

This is why God entrusted art to man. He offered it to the earth, the sky, the mountains and oceans; none accepted it. This does not mean that they were asked, 'Oh mountain or sky, do you want it?' And they said, 'No.' So man picked it up. This means, rather, that mountains and oceans do not have creativity, they are not conscious and do not feel the need of things beyond that which already exists. They cannot feel. They are neither in need nor agitated and pained, nor can they create. It is the human being who picks it up. But what ?

He picks up the ability which he feels he has; he can choose; he can create. This is why I said that art is the expression of the power of creativity in human beings. In continuing it, in decorating it, it continues being. Being is the ultimate goal for everything, both the being of nature and that of the life of society, both organic being and the being of our human limitations.

Art is the expression of the human being's creativity and through the continuation of this being, it becomes an expression of the creativity of God, in order to create what he wants and does not find. Therefore, as Hegel says, 'Art has been evolving from the material and objective towards the perceptible, intellectual and subjective.'