sublime
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
wonder, as one might feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara
Falls for the first time. Can you get a sublime feeling from
reading a book? I would suggest no, from the finiteness of the medium.
Don Tuite
IIRC from reading Russell's History of Western Philosophy these
thiry-odd years ago, it was Longinus who kicked off the sublimity
thing. There's a translation at:
http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/longinus/
At the time, and based only on BR's summary, I wasn't blown away.
Dunno what I'd think now.
Don
Sam Culotta
<tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote in message
news:bgh5l3$hjt$1...@news1.radix.net...
This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
--
Sam
( Change "invalid" to net to reply )
Rich Clancey
+ This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
+ both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
+ the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
+ numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
+ Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
Robert Schumann, comparing flowers to musical compositions:
"The former may be a flower, the latter is a poem, that is,
belongs to the world of spirit. The former comes from an
impuslse of crude nature, the latter stems from the consciousness
of the poetic mind."
I'm with you. I find the works of human beings much more moving
in a fundamental way than nature.
--
rich clancey r...@world.std.com
"Shun those who deny we have eyes in order to see, and instead say we
see because we happen to have eyes." -- Leibniz
Sam Culotta
"Rich Clancey" <r...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:bgk91b$3mp$1...@pcls4.std.com...
> Sam Culotta done wrote:
> + This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've
seen
> + both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither
produced
> + the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
> + numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention
music.
> + Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
>
> Robert Schumann, comparing flowers to musical compositions:
>
> "The former may be a flower, the latter is a poem, that is,
> belongs to the world of spirit. The former comes from an
> impuslse of crude nature, the latter stems from the consciousness
> of the poetic mind."
>
> I'm with you. I find the works of human beings much more moving
> in a fundamental way than nature.
>
Thanks for the Schumann quote : a more poetic statement of my viewpoint. I
purposely left out music in my response because the original point was the
finite quality of writing, but music/poetry ( much the same) is filled with
examples.
Joyce Kilmer felt he'd never seen a poem lovely as a tree. If it's true that
his life was saved by a tree during his service in WW l, I can understand
his bias.
Lewis Mammel
Rich Clancey wrote:
>
> Sam Culotta done wrote:
> + This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
> + both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
> + the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
> + numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
> + Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
>
> Robert Schumann, comparing flowers to musical compositions:
>
> "The former may be a flower, the latter is a poem, that is,
> belongs to the world of spirit. The former comes from an
> impuslse of crude nature, the latter stems from the consciousness
> of the poetic mind."
"... stems ..."
" ... und alle ehrlichkeit des Menschens wie des Grasses Blumens"
Lewis Mammel
I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
secondary. Granting that poetry need not dwell on nature, per se, we
must recognize that it communicates some sort of felt experience, primary
to the communication itself. It follows then that our primary subjective
experience, whether of the Grand Canyon or other items, is what fills
us most with wonder, and this sense of wonder is perforce enhanced or
amplified by its representation in art. Case in point, Dylan's "Chimes of
Freedom", if you see what I mean.
It seems to me a form of decadence, almost to the point of parasitism, to
have concentrated so exlusively, for such a long period of time, on artistic
representations that ones experience becomes so wholly secondary that one
no longer recognizes what is primary to it, Oscar Wilde notwithstanding.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> Sam Culotta wrote:
>
>><tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote in message
>>news:bgh5l3$hjt$1...@news1.radix.net...
>>
>>>The sublime as an aesthetic experience is a feeing of awe or
>>>wonder, as one might feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara
>>>Falls for the first time. Can you get a sublime feeling from
>>>reading a book? I would suggest no, from the finiteness of the medium.
>>>
>>This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
>>both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
>>the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
>>numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
>>Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
>>
>
> I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
> that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
> romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> secondary.
Sure. As secondary as a Gothic church is secondary to lumber, rocks, and
the sand they made the stained glass of.
Rich Clancey
+ I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
+ that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
+ romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
+ induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
+ secondary.
Actually, the nature-inspired poetry apparently started with
Wordsworth. You don't find a lot of idealization of nature in
earlier writers, in part because most people spent the better
part of their waking hours staring at the rear end of a draft
animal. It's difficult to idealize nature when you have to
deal with it all the time on a life and death basis. Seeing
nature as inherently good or inherently beautiful was a
product of the industrial revolution.
In the Christian-dominated era for hundreds of years before
Wordsworth, "nature" was viewed as something which threatened
the spiritual perfectability of humans. It was temptation,
decay, and in general the opposite of "perfection".
OFurorHortensis
>The sublime as an aesthetic experience is a feeing of awe or wonder, as one
might feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls for the first time.
Can you get a sublime feeling from reading a book?
The concept, and word, is consistently misapplied, indeed, in its companion
form, "awesome," it approaches the stature of "icon" as egregiously abused
terminology.
You are correct in your definition, although "sublime" is perhaps best
appreciated as one of a triad of aesthetic concepts, the others being the
"picturesque" and the "beautiful."
The essence of the sublime is the experience of awe in the face of an
immensity, with undertones of fear and trembling, albeit fear experienced from
a safe coign of vantage.
This awe may or may not be tinctured with religious elements, but sincere
religious language is not a feature of the preponderance of the documents in
whichare found discussions of these aesthetic categories.
These categories were most famously applied descriptively to eighteenth century
continental landscape paintings, with the "beautiful" characterized by
"smoothness," and a serene ambience (Claude)--not to mention, at least
according to Hogarth, serpentine lines-- and the "picturesque" characterized by
shagginess and vignettes often involving banditti and gypsies (Rosa), mayhap a
nice little (shaggy) thatched shack, some (shaggy) sheep, a (shaggy) uprooted
tree. Incorporation of larger and more sober human themes or symbolism might
elevate the genre landscape to the realm of History painting (Poussin), where
the tunes were called by Aristotle. The whole game changes as Romanticism
gained ascendency, of course... but I digress.
In any case, where it gets interesting is when we encounter the scholarly
conceit that among the English, those notable connoisseurs of landscape
paintings and rural delights, the appreciation of the aforementioned
continental paintings and the associated aesthetic categories predated and
facilitated their growing appreciation of their local English landscapes as
such.
That is, the English upper classes were educated to the appreciation of the
natural beauty around them by exposure to the continental landscape paintings
which often served as souvenirs of their touring, and also from exposure to
famous monuments of continental scenery.
All of this exercise of one's rarified emotions made for delicious
conversations with like-minded persons in which one might demonstrate exquisite
sensibility and mastery of the fashionable patter of connoiseurship, for it was
highly fashionable to have trembled in awe of the sublimity of the Matterhorn
or an Austrian ravine, and de rigeur to have brought home a painting as a
souvenir of reveries in Venice. Through a "Claude-glass," even the the terrain
of England itself might be made to resemble a continental painting.
But do we experience true sublimity in paintings? Not often, I believe.
Possibly in the late works of Rothko and some few others. Architecture,
sculpture, and designed landscapes, on the other hand, may well evoke the
sublime. Music is another can of worms altogether.
You wonder if a book my be sublime. With an author who is a master of language,
description and psychology, an engaged reader with appropriate sensibility, and
a suitable subject--- likely to be the bugbear-- it seems not impossible to me.
Of course, simply scaring the reader shitless by the description of something
looming vast and obscurely threatening would not meet the challenge, although
there again the attraction lies in the reader having an opportunity to take the
emotions out for a brisk jog.
True sublimity is not involved if the awe of the reader arises solely in
appreciation of the writer's craft or the brute physical magnitude of a created
object, which is where most attempts to evoke the sublime in conventional media
tear their keel on the rocks.
Furor
francis muir
Don Tuite
<r...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:
> Actually, the nature-inspired poetry apparently started with
> Wordsworth. You don't find a lot of idealization of nature in
> earlier writers, in part because most people spent the better
> part of their waking hours staring at the rear end of a draft
> animal.
But,
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!
In fact, as to the ass ends of draft animals,
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu
Bulloc sterteth, bucke ferteth.
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!
Later, but still pre IR,
Western wind when wilt thou blow
the small rain down can rain
Christ if my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again
> Seeing
> nature as inherently good or inherently beautiful was a
> product of the industrial revolution.
I will stipulate that the IR may have ushered in some bogus
sentimentality.
Don
mazzolata
> Sublime? Another glass of port for the general.
>
Wot, no Madeira ? Gi' us a glass o' Malmsey, mate.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage
le soleil passe son bras par la fenetre
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 4th of August, 2003
Lew:
I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
secondary.
Silke:
Sure. As secondary as a Gothic church is secondary to lumber, rocks, and
the sand they made the stained glass of.
So, according to you, the imitation of the experience of
natural wonder in some (nature/romantic) poetry is *like*
the imitation of wonder in their raw building materials that Gothic
churches are about?
I understand Lew's use of "secondary"---poetry whose aesthetic
is imitative of a feeling we get primarily from observation of nature.
I do not understand, however, that the aesthetic effect of a Gothic
church is anything at all like what we get from contemplating
lumber, rocks, or sand. Assuming, that is, you were not thinking
about lumber, rocks, and sand in a way that, for instance, a scientist
might derive wonder and awe from them.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Sam Culotta
> It seems to me a form of decadence, almost to the point of parasitism, to
> have concentrated so exclusively, for such a long period of time, on
artistic
> representations that ones experience becomes so wholly secondary that one
> no longer recognizes what is primary to it, Oscar Wilde notwithstanding.<
I would tend to agree if one's concentration on the "secondary" in fact
caused a loss of recognition of the primary. I never intended to denigrate
the experience of viewing nature, but I've always been a little
uncomfortable with the adoration of nature as if it has some unspoiled,
eden-esque, quality and man is secondary to it.
The Schumann quote that Rich Clancey provided almost edges into what this
thread threatens to become: a polarization of nature/man.
I only mean to say that I, personally, find the actions of humankind, both
the ridiculous and the sublime, more fascinating and awe inspiring than
Nature, which just happens to contain, man. To weigh the virtues of
something against itself seems like an academic exercise, albeit an
entertaining and thought provoking one.
Sam
( Change "invalid" to net to reply )
"Lewis Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3F2E0C23...@worldnet.att.net...
> Lew Mammel, Jr.
OFurorHortensis
>Western wind when wilt thou blow
>the small rain down can rain
>Christ if my love were in my arms
>and I in my bed again
My favorite poem.
Furor
OFurorHortensis
>It seems to me a form of decadence,
almost to the point of parasitism, to
>have concentrated so exlusively, for such a long period of time, on artistic
>representations that ones experience becomes so wholly secondary that one
>no longer recognizes what is primary to it, Oscar Wilde notwithstanding.
I don't think this actually happens.
I believe one's capacity for aesthetic response may be developed or educated
along certain lines, and one's recognition of that which is generally
understood to be finest of its kind may thereby be enhanced, with concommitant
development of an ability to recognize lesser goods, but I do not think that a
surfeit of aesthetic responses of one sort can, or must inevitably, result in
satiety or jaded responses in that same aesthetic arena, much less another
aesthetic arena altogether.
Looking at a sunset and looking at a painting of a sunset, and reading a poem
about a sunset, and listening to that poem read, or sung, are entirely
different and discrete aesthetic experiences and, common putative subject
notwithstanding, it would be an error to confound them, posit parity among
them, or arrive at inferences predicated upon some presumed capacity for mutual
adulteration.
Furor
Lewis Mammel
Rich Clancey wrote:
>
> Lewis Mammel done wrote:
> + I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
> + that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
> + romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> + induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> + secondary.
>
> Actually, the nature-inspired poetry apparently started with
> Wordsworth. You don't find a lot of idealization of nature in
> earlier writers, in part because most people spent the better
> part of their waking hours staring at the rear end of a draft
> animal. It's difficult to idealize nature when you have to
> deal with it all the time on a life and death basis. Seeing
> nature as inherently good or inherently beautiful was a
> product of the industrial revolution.
Lucretius conveys an attitude which seems very close to romanticism
when you read it.
Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,
Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,
For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
> In the Christian-dominated era for hundreds of years before
> Wordsworth, "nature" was viewed as something which threatened
> the spiritual perfectability of humans. It was temptation,
> decay, and in general the opposite of "perfection".
Galileo commented on this specifically:
The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular
reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them. What
greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling
jewels, silver, and gold, "precious," and earth and soil
"base" ? People who do this ought to remember that if there
were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious
metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a
bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just
to have enough earth to plant a jasimine in a little pot,
or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and
produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and
fine fruit. It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar
take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond
very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would
not exchange one for ten barrels of water. Those who so
greatly exalt incorruptiblity, inalterability, etc. are reduced
to talking this way, I believe, by their great desire to go on
living, and by the terror they have of death. They do not
reflect that if men were immortal, they themselves would never
have come into the world. Such men really deserve to encounter
some Medusa's head which would transmute them into statues
of jasper or fo diamond, and thus make them more perfect
than they are.
This is from Sagredo ( second banana to Galileo's mouthpiece, Salviati )
in Dialogues concerning the Two Great Wold Systems, the First Day.
Note how he refers to the appreciation of the flower as something
that everbody would naturally understand, and surely this has been
true in all ages.
I think the Romantics were innovative in the central importance
they gave to Nature in art and philosophy, but as the Greeks
said, "There were brave men before Agamemnon"
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Louis Katorz
>Sublime? Another glass of port for the
>general.
Following his retreat from Moscow, Napoleon I supposedly said: "It is
only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous."
I'll have a snifter of Cognac, _Grande Fine Champagne_, s'il vous
plaît.
Louis Katorz
Perhaps some who read "The Imitation of Christ" or the writings of St.
Teresa of Avila may get a sublime feeling from them.
As to nature, Kathleen Deignan has edited the writings on nature of
Thomas Merton in a new book titled "when the trees say nothing".
Louis Katorz
>Joyce Kilmer felt he'd never seen a poem
>lovely as a tree. If it's true that his life was
>saved by a tree during his service in WW
>l, I can understand his bias.
Actually Kilmer was killed in action in France on July 30, 1918. One
could say that his literary life was saved by a tree but not all would
concur.
Lewis Mammel
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
> I understand Lew's use of "secondary"---poetry whose aesthetic
> is imitative of a feeling we get primarily from observation of nature.
> I do not understand, however, that the aesthetic effect of a Gothic
> church is anything at all like what we get from contemplating
> lumber, rocks, or sand. Assuming, that is, you were not thinking
> about lumber, rocks, and sand in a way that, for instance, a scientist
> might derive wonder and awe from them.
I was going to say that. I was also going to add that the primary
experience on which the aesthetics of Gothic cathedrals are based
is, rather obviously, the medieval religiosity that was being
given expression in their building.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
> Monday, the 4th of August, 2003
>
> Lew:
> I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
> that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
> romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> secondary.
> Silke:
> Sure. As secondary as a Gothic church is secondary to lumber, rocks, and
> the sand they made the stained glass of.
>
> So, according to you, the imitation of the experience of
> natural wonder in some (nature/romantic) poetry is *like*
> the imitation of wonder in their raw building materials that Gothic
> churches are about?
According to me, it is silly to establish a hierarchy. And, yes, the
sand dunes or the mountains from which the materials for the church are
drawn can inspire awe as well. So fucking what?
> I understand Lew's use of "secondary"---poetry whose aesthetic
> is imitative of a feeling we get primarily from observation of nature.
Yeah, that's how I understood it as well. Damn silly.
> I do not understand, however, that the aesthetic effect of a Gothic
> church is anything at all like what we get from contemplating
> lumber, rocks, or sand.
Me, neither. Just as the effect of Mondnacht is nothing like the effect
of a full moon.
francis muir
> Michael S. Morris wrote:
>> I do not understand, however,
>> that the aesthetic effect of
>> a Gothic church is anything
>> at all like what we get from
>> contemplating lumber, rocks,
>> or sand.
> Me, neither. Just as the effect
> of Mondnacht is nothing like
> the effect of a full moon.
Teutonic flash mob?
Jorn Barger
> > news:bgh5l3$hjt$1...@news1.radix.net...
> > > The sublime as an aesthetic experience is a feeing of awe or
> > > wonder, as one might feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara
> > > Falls for the first time. Can you get a sublime feeling from
> > > reading a book? I would suggest no, from the finiteness of the medium.
The Latin root means 'elevated' but I always assumed that
referred to the subjective sense of the viewer's feeling
elevated, not the objective sense of the view's rising to
some unusual altitude. For me, it's not moral elevation,
either, but being lifted out of oneself, which has always
been the goal of religious mysticism.
JL Austin introduced a very useful trick for testing
words' meanings, called 'ordinary language analysis' where
you try out various sentences with the word and enquire
which sound proper and which improper. So "Homer's epics
are sublime" is pretty uncontroversial, but "I find
Stephen King sublime" is hard to credit except as
tongue-in-cheek.
So you can also ask "What's sublime in Shakespeare?" and
the obvious, uncontroversial answer is his language and
his vivid characters.
Any sort of literature can aspire to sublimity-- history
(eg Gibbon), comedy (eg Sterne), etc.
> Sam Culotta wrote:
> > This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
> > both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
> > the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
> > numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
> > Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
"Madame Bovary" is supposedly a watershed in which sublime
expression was utterly divorced from sublime subject-matter.
The esthetes of the late 19thC explored how the effects of
language can become the entire focus-- language has very
mysterious rules, and poetry-etc is a very serious tool for
studying these.
Lewis Mammel <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<3F2E0C23...@worldnet.att.net>...
> I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but I have to say
> that the sentiment perplexes me. Much of poetry, especially of course
> romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> secondary. Granting that poetry need not dwell on nature, per se, we
> must recognize that it communicates some sort of felt experience, primary
> to the communication itself. It follows then that our primary subjective
> experience, whether of the Grand Canyon or other items, is what fills
> us most with wonder, and this sense of wonder is perforce enhanced or
> amplified by its representation in art. Case in point, Dylan's "Chimes of
> Freedom", if you see what I mean.
Here's a quote from Nabokov's "Sebastian Knight":
"He wandered on talking to himself, his shadow now
pulling a long nose, now dropping a curtsey, as it
slipped back round a lamp-post."
There's nothing sublime in the subject-matter (a shadow
crossing a lamp-post), but Nabokov makes it forever after
sublime for me, by seeing it anew. (Even the Grand Canyon
has been seen by so many eyes that it's become sapped-- so
it's not about size.)
Nabokov's "Strong Opinions" offers lots of speculation on
the literary sublime, but I think one must be wary because
for VN personally, sublimity seems to have become confused
with narcissism-- he wrecks almost every book by striving
for a sublime theme that has to be ineffable (about time,
or death, etc). Compare this to Tolstoy, whose writing
was sublime but whose themes were absolutely accessible...
Again, if you consider the range of VN's characters, the
vast majority are displayed with contempt, in contrast to
a central genius who stands in for VN. ("Sebastian Knight"
is especially shameless in portraying VN/Knight thru the
adoring eyes of a younger brother.)
Every book seems to include one decent mediocrity for
balance (eg Claire Bishop in RLoSK), which proves VN is
capable of it, but the idea of him writing anything like
an ordinary novel in which _most_ characters are harmless
nobodies is inconceivable.
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 4th of August, 2003
Lew:
I don't know if would count this as sacrilege, but
I have to say that the sentiment perplexes me. Much
of poetry, especially of course romantic poetry, is
in the way of sharing such experiences as are induced
by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are
frankly secondary.
Silke:
Sure. As secondary as a Gothic church is secondary
to lumber, rocks, and the sand they made the stained glass of.
I said:
So, according to you, the imitation of the experience of
natural wonder in some (nature/romantic) poetry is *like*
the imitation of wonder in their raw building materials
that Gothic churches are about?
Silke:
According to me, it is silly to establish a hierarchy.
Hierarchy? I was hoping only to establish what the analogy
was. And I still don't get it. Ain't no hierarchy in sight,
unless you were imagining that an emotion provoked secondarily---
i.e. by art in a way that imitates nature---stands in some
hierachical place relative to the real thing. Judging by
certain things you have said about pornography, for example,
one might be inclined to believe you do have such a hierachy in
mind. But, please do not assume your own ,logical pathologies
on me.
Silke:
And, yes, the sand dunes or the mountains from
which the materials for the church are
drawn can inspire awe as well. So fucking what?
I thought---as my last sentence in my post attempted to make
clear---I was granting your dismissivity. That is, we are
considering sand and rock and wood qua pile of unsightly
building materials, is all, and neither the sand dunes,
the trees, the mountains they came from, nor the awesome
beauty of the crystalline structure of silicates.
I.e., I reserve the fact that sand is awesomely beautiful,
considered in many different ways, but I am happy to consider
it dismissively in the present context. I'm *still* struggling
with the analogy you set up. It seems to me a Gothic church
does not try to imitate something of nature (or a human emotional
or aesthetic response thereto) in the way a nature poem does.
An American cityscape, for example, probably does. You could
cite Levi-Strauss in _Tristes Tropiques_ about how American
cities are artificial landscapes. As opposed to a European city,
which is neighbourhoods. Certainly the skyline of Chicago is
like a Western landscape. So, it provokes similar feelings
to looking at the Rockies. But, a Gothic church, I think
anyway, is distinct in its aesthetic. It doesn't seem to me
to have anything to do with imitating an aesthetic derived from
nature. But, maybe you have an opposing point of view about the
aesthetic of Gothic churches. If so, I would like to hear it.
I said:
I understand Lew's use of "secondary"---poetry
whose aesthetic is imitative of a feeling we get
primarily from observation of nature.
Silke:
Yeah, that's how I understood it as well. Damn silly.
What's silly about it? It's exactly what you were doing with
pornography---you were dismissing writing designed to get a guy's
dick hard precisely because it wasn't the guy's bedmate getting
his dick hard, i.e. because the aesthetic was secondary.
I said:
I do not understand, however, that the aesthetic
effect of a Gothic church is anything at all like
what we get from contemplating lumber, rocks, or sand.
Silke:
Me, neither. Just as the effect of Mondnacht is
nothing like the effect of a full moon.
Ahh, so you do occasionally clarify! However, since
I don't know Mondnacht, I really can't say that it does
fall in Lew's category of poetry, or out of it, as you
say it does. You certainly didn't take Lew to be speaking of
*all* poetry, or even all nature poetry, did you? You certainly
gave him credit enough to understand that a "nature poem"
could well intend some other effect entirely than provoking
the same aesthetic response nature does?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> The essence of the sublime is the experience of awe in the face of an
> immensity, with undertones of fear and trembling, albeit fear experienced
> from a safe coign of vantage.
This sounds like a lot like horror - I guess it depends if the object is
good or evil.
> You wonder if a book my be sublime. With an author who is a master of
> language, description and psychology, an engaged reader with appropriate
> sensibility, and a suitable subject--- likely to be the bugbear-- it seems
> not impossible to me.
Maybe it helps to be a first-time reader, to be newly exposed to the
magicalness of writing?
> True sublimity is not involved if the awe of the reader arises solely in
> appreciation of the writer's craft or the brute physical magnitude of a
> created object, which is where most attempts to evoke the sublime in
> conventional media tear their keel on the rocks.
This also leaves out the possibilty of the book being really big, maybe
6 feet tall or more. :)
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> This might sound sacrilegious to lovers of nature, but the fact is I've seen
> both Niagara and the Grand Canyon and I can honestly say neither produced
> the sense of awe I receive from reading a great line of poetry or from
> numerous selections of prose, most notably by Joyce, not to mention music.
> Of all nature, human nature affects me most.
So do you prefer your landscape paintings to be with or without people?
I like a few anonymous folk in the foreground for scale.
Irina Bondarenko Feeney
> romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> secondary.
I'm reading Stephen Fry's _Hippopotamus_ at the moment, and interestingly,
happened upon the following just now:
<quote>
As is natural at his age, he believes that poetry's sole function seems to
lie in the description of nature. Keats, Clare, Wordsworth, selected
Browning and Tennyson, that sort of jazz. I delicately put him right.
'No, no, no, you chump. You must have heard the expression "the
egotistical sublime"? These people aren't writing about dandelions and
daisies, they're writing about themselves. Romantic poets are more obsessed
with self than the most therapy-addicted Californian you can imagine.
"_I_wandered lonely as a cloud", "_My_ heart aches", "_My_ heart leaps up".'
<end quote>
I've been reading Stephen Fry quite a bit lately. Finished_Making History_
the other day. Highly recommended. Anyone else read it? Or anything of
his?
Irina
OFurorHortensis
>This sounds like a lot like horror - I guess it depends if the object is
>good or evil.>>
Understand, all this is a constellation of fluid concepts, subjects of
discussion in themselves over decades, rather than any firm coda. As I recall
Edmund Burke --writing circa 1750- discussed all sorts of things that might
provoke a sensation of the sublime, including small reptiles. You might enjoy
checking that out. The body of literature, primary and critical, on the subject
is large and none of the material is very demanding. Uvedale Price had things
to say, and will repay attention.
I think one of the more interesting aspects of this matter is the business of
classfication of aesthetic experiences, that is, the examination, sorting, and
defining of them, and the stimuli productive of them. All talk about feelings
notwithstanding, this is an encyclopedist's approach, which is what redeemed
the whole discussion from being a parlor game.
>Maybe it helps to be a first-time reader, to be newly exposed to the
>magicalness of writing?>
You mean the innocent eye? The fresh and impressionable palate? The unsullied
and responsive sensibility? Well, I think there is a good deal of romantic
bullshit out there about innocence, frankly. I don't think prolonged exposure
to aesthetic experiences inures one to affect, although there may be a need to
pause and refresh the palate occasionally. The freshness of the writing could
well be a factor.
>This also leaves out the possibilty of the book being really big, maybe
>6 feet tall or more. :)
Oh, exactly. The sublimity of the elephant folio. The example I visualized was
one of those vast sincere mediocre landscape paintings to which one's strongest
response is likely to be awe at the size of the canvas, accompanied by
trembling in fear of the wire giving way.
Furor
Sam Culotta
<tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote in message
news:bgoo94$4k5$2...@news1.radix.net...
Actually, while I enjoy some landscapes ( French Impressionist mostly ) I
think, like you, I prefer them to have people in them. I don't know, it's
just the humanity of the thing that touches me. Living life with grace is
such a damned difficult thing to do, and all a tree has to do is grow and
drop leaves and it contains all the grace in the world. I'm a sucker for
the underdog.
Sam
francis muir
Bondarenko Feeney" <ir...@feeney9142.freenet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "Lewis Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:3F2E0C23...@worldnet.att.net...
>>
>> ... Much of poetry, especially of course
>> romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
>> induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
>> secondary.
>
> I'm reading Stephen Fry's _Hippopotamus_ at the moment, and interestingly,
> happened upon the following just now:
> <quote>
>
> As is natural at his age, he believes that poetry's sole function seems to
> lie in the description of nature. Keats, Clare, Wordsworth, selected
> Browning and Tennyson, that sort of jazz. I delicately put him right.
> 'No, no, no, you chump. You must have heard the expression "the
> egotistical sublime"? These people aren't writing about dandelions and
> daisies, they're writing about themselves. Romantic poets are more obsessed
> with self than the most therapy-addicted Californian you can imagine.
> "_I_wandered lonely as a cloud", "_My_ heart aches", "_My_ heart leaps up".'
>
> <end quote>
To be fair, "I wonder'd [sic] lonely as a cloud" was Dottie's not Willie's.
R.A. Leonard
>
> I've been reading Stephen Fry quite a bit lately. Finished_Making History_
> the other day. Highly recommended. Anyone else read it? Or anything of
> his?
>
> Irina
Hello, Irina
to quote from an ancient contibution to rab:
"Such an uneven author. I thought "The Liar" and "The Hippopotamus" very
successful and the first half of The Stars' Tennis Balls'
was as delightful as they. "Making History" and "Moab is my
Washpot" were not successful IMHO, and the second part of TSTB [equally
unsuccessful] "
However, I will always be a fan and will read anything new that he produces.
I enjoyed him in Gormenghast. He played Professor Bellgrove, Titus' headmaster
who
courts Irma Prunsquallor.
--
__________________________________________
R.A. Leonard
Ottawa Canada
http://www.raleonard.com/
Lewis Mammel
Irina Bondarenko Feeney wrote:
>
> "Lewis Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:3F2E0C23...@worldnet.att.net...
> >
> > ... Much of poetry, especially of course
> > romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> > induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> > secondary.
>
> I'm reading Stephen Fry's _Hippopotamus_ at the moment, and interestingly,
> happened upon the following just now:
> <quote>
>
> As is natural at his age, he believes that poetry's sole function seems to
> lie in the description of nature. Keats, Clare, Wordsworth, selected
> Browning and Tennyson, that sort of jazz. I delicately put him right.
> 'No, no, no, you chump. You must have heard the expression "the
> egotistical sublime"? These people aren't writing about dandelions and
> daisies, they're writing about themselves. Romantic poets are more obsessed
> with self than the most therapy-addicted Californian you can imagine.
> "_I_wandered lonely as a cloud", "_My_ heart aches", "_My_ heart leaps up".'
The poem, I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud ( http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html )
serves very well to illustrate my point. The poem is a way for the poet
to share his rapturous communion with nature, which makes the poem secondary
to the poet's presumed actual experience. If we don't believe the poet is
honestly reporting this experience, the whole thing becomes a lie and a sham.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
smw wrote:
> ... Just as the effect of Mondnacht is nothing like the effect
> of a full moon.
But it depends on the common experience of a moonlit night. Surely
the poem would be entirely meaningless without that experience.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
Jorn Barger wrote:
>
> Here's a quote from Nabokov's "Sebastian Knight":
>
> "He wandered on talking to himself, his shadow now
> pulling a long nose, now dropping a curtsey, as it
> slipped back round a lamp-post."
>
> There's nothing sublime in the subject-matter (a shadow
> crossing a lamp-post), but Nabokov makes it forever after
> sublime for me, by seeing it anew.
But you contradict yourself. You saw it anew, and saw the
sublimity in it. This makes the passage a form of instruction.
It gives form to your own inchoate experience of this phenomenon.
"My mind, like a cloud momentarily illuminated by a lightning-flash,
is for an instant filled with an unusual light ..." - Sagredo
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
OFurorHortensis wrote:
>
> You mean the innocent eye? The fresh and impressionable palate? The unsullied
> and responsive sensibility? Well, I think there is a good deal of romantic
> bullshit out there about innocence, frankly. I don't think prolonged exposure
> to aesthetic experiences inures one to affect, although there may be a need to
> pause and refresh the palate occasionally. The freshness of the writing could
> well be a factor.
Wasn't there a literary type not long ago who gave up reading out
of satiation and ennui ?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
Jorn Barger wrote:
>
> > > <tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote in message
> > > news:bgh5l3$hjt$1...@news1.radix.net...
> > > > The sublime as an aesthetic experience is a feeing of awe or
> > > > wonder, as one might feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara
> > > > Falls for the first time. Can you get a sublime feeling from
> > > > reading a book? I would suggest no, from the finiteness of the medium.
>
> The Latin root means 'elevated' but I always assumed that
> referred to the subjective sense of the viewer's feeling
> elevated, not the objective sense of the view's rising to
> some unusual altitude. For me, it's not moral elevation,
> either, but being lifted out of oneself, which has always
> been the goal of religious mysticism.
Oh yes, I wanted to say also that I'm in sympathy with this
observation. I was going to give two examples of my own experience
of the sublime, but drew back because of this definitional issue.
Isn't that pathetic? Well, my examples were Ariel's "retirement speech"
( Merrily, merrily etc ) and Belinda's passage across the Thames
in The Rape of the Lock. Both involve fairies N.B. I was going to say
that I felt "transported" by these passages, which conforms to your
notion here.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com wrote:
> OFurorHortensis <ofurorh...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The essence of the sublime is the experience of awe in the face of an
>>immensity, with undertones of fear and trembling, albeit fear experienced
>>from a safe coign of vantage.
>>
>
> This sounds like a lot like horror - I guess it depends if the object is
> good or evil.
Nah. Terror is part of the reaction to the sublime. Kant distinguishes
between the pleasant, the beautiful, and the sublime (following Burke in
part, who does the beautiful/sublime thing). Good or evil don't come in,
really. The sublime cannot be represented in/by the mind. It's final and
most important manifestation is the mathematical sublime. Mountains and
stuff are the mere natural sublime.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
It creates a common experience of an aesthetic representation of a
moonlit night. Who knows whether anybody would give a damn if there
hadn't been moon poetry. So I think that the representation creates the
experience as much and probably more importantly than the other way around.
Irina Bondarenko Feeney
"R.A. Leonard" <rale...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3F303509...@sympatico.ca...
> Irina Bondarenko Feeney wrote:
>
> >
> > I've been reading Stephen Fry quite a bit lately. Finished_Making
History_
> > the other day. Highly recommended. Anyone else read it? Or anything
of
> > his?
> >
> > Irina
>
> Hello, Irina
> to quote from an ancient contibution to rab:
> "Such an uneven author. I thought "The Liar" and "The Hippopotamus"
very
> successful and the first half of The Stars' Tennis Balls'
> was as delightful as they. "Making History" and "Moab is my
> Washpot" were not successful IMHO, and the second part of TSTB [equally
> unsuccessful] "
Rose Anne,
I can see where you're coming from. I've read and enjoyed tremendously _The
Liar_, _The Stars' Tennis Balls_, and _Making History_, but _Paperweight_
didn't hold my interest and I stopped reading after the first couple of
chapters.
> However, I will always be a fan and will read anything new that he
produces.
> I enjoyed him in Gormenghast. He played Professor Bellgrove, Titus'
headmaster
> who
> courts Irma Prunsquallor.
Haven't seen it. But looooved him in the Jeeves and Wooster adaptations.
Irina
francis muir
Bondarenko Feeney" <ir...@feeney9142.freenet.co.uk> wrote:
Most recently in *Gosford Park*, which is a jewel, and the soon to
be *Le Divorce*. Like many actors Fry is best when tightly directed.
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> Haven't seen it. But looooved him in the Jeeves and Wooster adaptations.
Gormenghast's worth a rental if it's at your video shoppe.
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of August, 2003
Silke:
It creates a common experience of an aesthetic
representation of a moonlit night. Who knows
whether anybody would give a damn if there
hadn't been moon poetry. So I think that the
representation creates the experience as much
and probably more importantly than the other
way around.
I believe you are just wrong about this. I believe the
aesthetic experiences of a moonlit night are hardwired in
human beings as animals. The representation draws on
the common aesthetic, but does not create the aesthetic in
the first place.
I can think immediately to my experience of the
Grand Canyon as a kid. You walk up to the rim for
the first time and a vast and beautiful universe is
before you on a scale that shrinks the human to
unimportance. My mother would remark that it is
impossible to stand on the rim and not believe in
God. The communication of that idea was immediate.
I certainly had read no nature poetry by that
point in my life, and I doubt my mother had. For
that matter, I know of no nature poetry which could
be credited with *creating* the aesthetic experience
of walking up to the rim of the Grand Canyon. Even
the Hudson River School of painting didn't do that.
Or Grofe. The feeling seems inherent in me and the
landscape---in the scales which are hard-wired, or given,
and the tinge of animal fear at forces beyond one's
animal comprehension. And "nature art" is to be judged
precisely by its ability to utilize this aesthetic that is
already in us.
Many feelings about a moonlit night seem to me to be inherent
in us as predatory animals, and in the natural phenomenon
itself.
The idea that art creates its own aesthetic---the standards
by which it is judged---and not the other way around is like
the idea that moral codes are created by cultural usages and
not the other way around. There is some tiny, tiny merit in it,
but it is ultimately an impoverished kind of scientism that
has been muchly overstated.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David J. Loftus
> > Hello, Irina
> > to quote from an ancient contibution to rab:
> > "Such an uneven author. I thought "The Liar" and "The Hippopotamus"
> very
> > successful and the first half of The Stars' Tennis Balls'
> > was as delightful as they. "Making History" and "Moab is my
> > Washpot" were not successful IMHO, and the second part of TSTB [equally
> > unsuccessful] "
>
> Rose Anne,
>
> I can see where you're coming from. I've read and enjoyed tremendously _The
> Liar_, _The Stars' Tennis Balls_, and _Making History_, but _Paperweight_
> didn't hold my interest and I stopped reading after the first couple of
> chapters.
I found _Moab is my Washpot_ somewhat charming and
fitfully interesting. Haven't read his fiction.
> > However, I will always be a fan and will read anything new that he
> produces.
> > I enjoyed him in Gormenghast. He played Professor Bellgrove, Titus'
> headmaster
> > who
> > courts Irma Prunsquallor.
>
> Haven't seen it. But looooved him in the Jeeves and Wooster adaptations.
Me, too. I wonder if there are any rabid, longtime
Wodehouse fans who did not think Fry was perfection
itself.
Did you guys see him in "Wilde"? Not a terribly
impressive story or script, but affecting to watch
nonetheless.
David Loftus
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Wednesday, the 6th of August, 2003
>
>
> Silke:
> It creates a common experience of an aesthetic
> representation of a moonlit night. Who knows
> whether anybody would give a damn if there
> hadn't been moon poetry. So I think that the
> representation creates the experience as much
> and probably more importantly than the other
> way around.
>
> I believe you are just wrong about this. I believe the
> aesthetic experiences of a moonlit night are hardwired in
> human beings as animals. The representation draws on
> the common aesthetic, but does not create the aesthetic in
> the first place.
If anything's hard-wired in human beings, it's fear of the night.
>
> I can think immediately to my experience of the
> Grand Canyon as a kid. You walk up to the rim for
> the first time and a vast and beautiful universe is
> before you on a scale that shrinks the human to
> unimportance.
Absolutely. But only because you've been ideologically conditioned to
think of yourself _as_ important. So it's news. In addition, every US
kid is conditioned to have a response to the GC. It's not as if your
parents had told you there was going to be a little hole in the ground
around the corner.
But even if you were right (and who the hell is to decide? animals by
natures destined for culture, remember), the nature poetry Lew referred
to does not treat nature, but the human response to nature. If it were
"about" nature, all the poetry you'd need would be "go look." Which
works just as well in prose.
> My mother would remark that it is
> impossible to stand on the rim and not believe in
> God.
Well, Mom's wrong.
> The communication of that idea was immediate.
Yup. As I said, there's no reaction to the GC that isn't ideologically,
culturally, poetically, pre-digested. You're making my point.
> I certainly had read no nature poetry by that
> point in my life, and I doubt my mother had.
Every Western is a piece of nature poetry according to the terms of this
discussion.
> For
> that matter, I know of no nature poetry which could
> be credited with *creating* the aesthetic experience
> of walking up to the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Precisely my point. And I know of no canyon that can create the
aesthetic experience of the Eighth Duino Elegy. I take it we're in
agreement then.
...
> The idea that art creates its own aesthetic---the standards
> by which it is judged---and not the other way around
are you suggesting that there's an aesthetics of the moon by which moon
poetry should be judged? As in, "that's a nice, round, yellow, very far
away poem"?
btw, I'm shocked a choirist like you doesn't know Mondnacht! "Es war als
haett der Himmel/die Erde still gekuesst" etc. etc. no bells ringing?
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> I can think immediately to my experience of the
> Grand Canyon as a kid. You walk up to the rim for
> the first time and a vast and beautiful universe is
> before you on a scale that shrinks the human to
> unimportance. My mother would remark that it is
> impossible to stand on the rim and not believe in
> God. The communication of that idea was immediate.
I wonder how one would distinguish a sublime feeling
from a religious experience. Does a feeling of sublimity
come from direct contact with the noumena? I get the feeling
that Kant wanted to believe in something on the other side of
phenomena, but he'd pretty much argued away God, so he
spent his brain cells working out sublimity.
Irina Bondarenko Feeney
"David J. Loftus" <dlo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Did you guys see him in "Wilde"? Not a terribly
> impressive story or script, but affecting to watch
> nonetheless.
I thought it was really good. Stephen Fry was perfect Oscar. And of course
there was Jude Law, stud muffin extraordinaire.
Irina
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> are you suggesting that there's an aesthetics of the moon by which moon
> poetry should be judged? As in, "that's a nice, round, yellow, very far
> away poem"?
The moon (and the sun) are special cases, since they are unique aesthetic
objects (except to astronomer-poets). Now if we had two moons or two suns
to contemplate ...
JimC
smw wrote:
> [The Grand Canyon as sublime]
> Precisely my point. And I know of no canyon that can create the
> aesthetic experience of the Eighth Duino Elegy. I take it we're in
> agreement then.
The Grand Canyon *is* one majestic ditch. Most tourists just stand
on the South Rim and grok for a half hour and drive back to a pizza in
Flagstaff. And then it's on to Amarillo or back to L.A. the next day.
(There's an interesting river gully in the Llano Estacado just south of
Amarillo called Palo Duro Canyon, a typical feature of high plateaus
with drainage everywhere, but it is tiny compared with Grand Canyon.)
Occasionally someone overgroks and falls several thousand feet killing
himself on the first bonk off a rocky outcropping. One time a European
tourist with an accent I couldn't identify, who had stepped over a
protective guard rail, began assailing me verbally for having a digital
camera. He was so animated that I conceded his point because I thought
he was dangerous to himself and those near him.
You should read Zane Grey's account, ca. 1919, of roping mountain lions
there ("Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon"). I do not understand how
these kinky people got off on trussing up cats. They were trying to
make the sublime tourist-friendly, I guess.
OFurorHortensis
< Wasn't there a literary type not long ago who gave up reading out of
satiation and ennui ?
Oh, I daresay. Shall we also hear of their recidivism, I wonder? "Fell off the
wagon on a plane to Barcelona when I discovered a Ngaio Marsh mystery I had not
yet read stuck between the seats."
I will offer a few thoughts:
*Everyone gets to have their preferred modes of aesthetic experience.
*There is, of course, an intellectual component in all of this, in the theory,
but also in the aesthetic experience itself, pace those who distinguish music
in this regard, and ideas can wear you out.
*It is not unusual in life to just get a little sick of some things from time
to time. But this is not the same as becoming substantially impaired as regards
capacity for aesthetic response, which condition would, some might say, be a
grave thing, with spiritual ramifications.
Furor
Bruce McGuffin
JimC in the grand canyon:
> You should read Zane Grey's account, ca. 1919, of roping mountain lions
> there ("Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon"). I do not understand how
> these kinky people got off on trussing up cats. They were trying to
> make the sublime tourist-friendly, I guess.
Having just made the pilgrimage, I know the rangers on the North Rim
claim Teddy Roosevelt killed all the bears and mountain lions, so he
could shoot more deer.
My theory is he did it because he enjoyed shooting bears and mountain
lions.
Bruce
OFurorHortensis
>I wonder how one would distinguish a sublime feeling
>from a religious experience. Does a feeling of sublimity
>come from direct contact with the noumena?
Remember that safe coign of vantage I mentioned earlier?
I recall a wonderful cartoon, probably from the New Yorker, in which a fellow
out viewing a starry sky turns to his gazing companion and says, "Let's go in
now; the universe gives me the willies."
ObBookSuggestion: Evelyn Underhill's "Mysticism"
Furor
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of August, 2003
Silke:
It creates a common experience of an aesthetic
representation of a moonlit night. Who knows
whether anybody would give a damn if there
hadn't been moon poetry. So I think that the
representation creates the experience as much
and probably more importantly than the other
way around.
I said:
I believe you are just wrong about this. I believe the
aesthetic experiences of a moonlit night are hardwired in
human beings as animals. The representation draws on
the common aesthetic, but does not create the aesthetic in
the first place.
Silke:
If anything's hard-wired in human beings, it's fear of the night.
And love in the night. And nightbirds and moths stretching
their wings and still lands and the rustle of a nightbreeze.
And metaphors.
I said:
I can think immediately to my experience of the
Grand Canyon as a kid. You walk up to the rim for
the first time and a vast and beautiful universe is
before you on a scale that shrinks the human to
unimportance.
Silke:
Absolutely. But only because you've been ideologically conditioned to
think of yourself _as_ important.
Except not. What I'd been ideologically conditioned to think is
myself as the center and be-all and end-all of the universe. The
reason the GC is so moving is that it screams *against* my ideological
conditioning. You haven't got a chance in hell of arguing that my
ideological conditioning was as you say. I had zero church upbringing,
you understand. I was told I was smart and could accomplish anything
I put my mind to from day 1. My mother seldom or, well, never mentioned
belief in God except in the context I have just given you.
Silke:
So it's news. In addition, every US kid is conditioned to have a
response to the GC. It's not as if your parents had told you there
was going to be a little hole in the ground around the corner.
Actually, they had told me nothing. There was zero prep. I hadn't a
clue at that age (6) what it was I was going to see. Also, if you've been
to the south rim, you'll know that the effect is incredibly sudden. You're
driving through pine forest, with no hint at all that there is anything there
until you are 50 yards from the rim.
Silke:
But even if you were right (and who the hell is to decide? animals by
natures destined for culture, remember),
I have remembered this throughout.
Silke:
the nature poetry Lew referred to does not treat nature,
but the human response to nature.
I think I've been clear on this throughout, too. I say, simply: Humans have
responses to nature that are *not* culturally conditioned, that are
prior to culture. Evidence---I think---is that the Wow! response to
the GC is such a response. It happened to me, for example, *before*
I'd been cuturally conditioned in ways that you have suggested.
Silke:
If it were "about" nature, all the poetry you'd need would be
"go look." Which works just as well in prose.
The issue is whether our responses are created by the work of
art, or are latently there as responses to nature in the absence of
all influence of art. Clearly, some responses to art involve aesthetics
which have been culturally conditioned. This is not in dispute. But,
what seems to be in dispute is whether there are *any* aesthetic responses,
judgments prior to art creating them, and I say clearly there are.
I said:
My mother would remark that it is
impossible to stand on the rim and not believe in
God.
Silke:
Well, Mom's wrong.
Probably not as wrong as you are by misreading it like that.
I said:
The communication of that idea was immediate.
Silke:
Yup. As I said, there's no reaction to the GC that isn't ideologically,
culturally, poetically, pre-digested. You're making my point.
So, all that poetry I had read by age 6? No, what I'm doing
is demolishing your point.
I said:
I certainly had read no nature poetry by that
point in my life, and I doubt my mother had.
Silke:
Every Western is a piece of nature poetry according to the terms of this
discussion.
Sure. Still, Houston, we have a problem here for your point, and
that is simply that I had seen no Westerns set in the Grand Canyon
by the time I encountered it. (Are there any Westerns set in the Grand
Canyon?).
I said:
For that matter, I know of no nature poetry which could
be credited with *creating* the aesthetic experience
of walking up to the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Silke:
Precisely my point.
Not at all your point, I'm sorry to say. There is chronological
priority to the aesthetic experience of nature. That is, the
aesthetic experience of nature comes *prior* to the human cultural
conditioning of that experience. Doesn't mean that experience
can't be or isn't culturally conditioned once we have it. Doesn't mean
that art can't or doesn't create new aesthetics. It just means that
there is a natural aesthetics that is prior to culture, that's all.
Silke:
And I know of no canyon that can create the
aesthetic experience of the Eighth Duino Elegy.
Agreed, but absolutely irrelevant to anything and
everything under discussion here.
Silke:
I take it we're in agreement then.
We are certainly agreed that some art can create
aesthetic experiences that are beyond, or different,
than the aesthetic experiences created
by nature. This was never in dispute.
I said:
The idea that art creates its own aesthetic---the standards
by which it is judged---and not the other way around
Silke:
are you suggesting that there's an aesthetics of the moon by which moon
poetry should be judged? As in, "that's a nice, round, yellow, very far
away poem"?
No, I'm suggesting there is an aesthetics of the moon independent of
moon poetry, which *some* moon poetry can, and does in fact, utilise.
Which is why your example of the poetical creation of an
extra-natural aesthetic in Mondnacht is logically irrelevant.
I haven't said that poems, or poems that mention the moon in some
way, can't appeal to or even create extra-natural aesthetics.
I have merely agreed with Lew that some nature poetry
utilizes an aesthetic that is borrowed from the natural.
Now that I read Mondnacht, by the way,
<http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/e/eichendorff/mondnacht.html>
I would comment that the poem is full of natural
aesthetic---the utilization of an aesthetic which humans
would feel *naturally* on a moonlit night in the cultural
absence of this poem.
Another way of putting this would be: The art of Mondnacht is
as much the art of discovery as it is the art of creation.
Silke:
btw, I'm shocked a choirist like you doesn't know Mondnacht! "Es war als
haett der Himmel/die Erde still gekuesst" etc. etc. no bells ringing?
I'm perplexed by your shock. I see seven musical settings of the
text listed at the above site. The Brahms, Hummel, and Schumann, for
example, seem to be solo lieder. I've sung in choirs the Brahms Requiem,
the Alto Rhapsody, and Schicksalslied. I'll be doing the Brahms Requiem
again this spring, Lord willing the creeks don't rise. Anyway, that's
all the Brahms I have ever done, and all, in fact, I would expect a chorister
to be familiar with, given the frequency with which these things are ever
done in classical musical programming. Anyway, these three are
*choral* pieces---settings in choral parts. Of solo lieder in German
I've worked on, ohh, maybe half a dozen of Schubert in two
years of private voice lessons. There are thousands of lieder. The idea that
"a chorister" should or even would be familiar with some random lied strikes
me as, well, pretty loopy. Is there some reason you can give for why
this one lied stands out as especially worthy of notice by choristers?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of August, 2003
Jim wrote:
The Grand Canyon *is* one majestic ditch. Most tourists just stand
on the South Rim and grok for a half hour and drive back to a pizza in
Flagstaff.
For what it's worth, I've done the 1-day hike down Bright Angel to
the top of the inner gorge. What was surprising about that to me was
how much of the aesthetic sense of sublimity goes away once one is down
inside it. In fact, on the upper plateau, there is more of a sense
of wide expanse of landscape than of being in a canyon at all.
Jim:
Occasionally someone overgroks and falls several thousand feet killing
himself on the first bonk off a rocky outcropping.
On our grand tour west last summer, my kids loved the stories
in _Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon_ by Michael P. Ghiglieri
and Thomas M. Myers, as well as the equally black-humored
_Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First
National Park_ by Lee H. Whittlesey.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
[Mondnacht]
> some random lied
what I'm I doing discussing poetry with a Barbarian!
Louis Katorz
>It is not unusual in life to just get a little
>sick of some things from time to time. But
>this is not the same as becoming
>substantially impaired as regards capacity
>for aesthetic response, which condition
>would, some might say, be a grave thing,
>with spiritual ramifications.
The Havasupai/Havasu Indians live in Supai Village, some 3000 feet deep
in the Grand Canyon and have resided there for more than a thousand
years. Does the sublimeness of the GC ever wear thin for them?
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> The Havasupai/Havasu Indians live in Supai Village, some 3000 feet deep
> in the Grand Canyon and have resided there for more than a thousand
> years. Does the sublimeness of the GC ever wear thin for them?
Do they still buy postcards?
R.A. Leonard
JimC wrote:
> smw wrote:
>
> > [The Grand Canyon as sublime]
>
> > Precisely my point. And I know of no canyon that can create the
> > aesthetic experience of the Eighth Duino Elegy. I take it we're in
> > agreement then.
>
> The Grand Canyon *is* one majestic ditch. Most tourists just stand
> on the South Rim and grok for a half hour and drive back to a pizza in
> Flagstaff.
Very convincing. I have not seen it, but:
I was at "The House on the Rock" somewhere in Wisconsin with a pal, who,
when I gaped at its piece de resistance, a full calliope in the "basement,"
said "The only thing I
have ever seen which has the same effect is the Grand Canyon."
Awestruck, yes, but the question: awestruck-sublime or awestruck --
ridiculous.
If that place is still open, it is a must-see. "Frank Lloyd Wright
inspired architecture" is one of its claims to fame. The mechanized
musical instruments which play automatically, and together (for a price)
are a sight to behold and you must feed the meter for the full effect.
It was the weirdest display of cheesy (Wisconsin right?) wretched excess I
ever did see. Worth every penny, (even though I didn't pay).
ra
--
__________________________________________
R.A. Leonard
Ottawa Canada
http://www.raleonard.com/
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of August, 2003
I said:
[Mondnacht]
some random lied
Silke:
what I'm I doing discussing poetry with a Barbarian!
Ach! After some checking on the web and on amazon,
I find that the setting of Mondnacht by Robert
Schumann in Liederkreis, Op. 39, No. 5 is pretty
canonical. For example, Barbra Streisand does it
on the album "Classical Barbra". And it shows up in
collections with titles like "The Art of the Lied",
alongside Fischer-Dieskau doing "Erlkoenig" and such.
It is, as I suggested however, a solo Lied, and not
exactly a composition that a *chorister* would be expected
to know about, since Lieder would typically not be
encountered in a choral setting (though some are occasionally
set for chorus). Personally, I've been working my way
through the Hyperion Schubert Edition (up to CD number
20 at the moment---which means I think I have 17 CD's
and approximately $340 yet to go).
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
tejas
The House on the Rock is still there; a veritable beacon. Did you go on a
Duck Ride at Wisconsin Dells after this? Then there's the Mustard Museum in
Mount Horeb, just west of Madison.
Ted
ObBook: WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP (by Lesey or is it Losey?)
Louis Katorz
No, they _sell_ them to the tourists.
R.A. Leonard
tejas wrote:
>
> The House on the Rock is still there; a veritable beacon. Did you go on a
> Duck Ride at Wisconsin Dells after this?
No, we went and had a pizza in Chicago!
> Then there's the Mustard Museum in
> Mount Horeb, just west of Madison.
>
> Ted
>
> ObBook: WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP (by Lesey or is it Losey?)
whatever. I must read it.
Arindam Banerjee
> "Lewis Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:3F2E0C23...@worldnet.att.net...
> >
> > ... Much of poetry, especially of course
> > romantic poetry, is in the way of sharing such experiences as are
> > induced by the experience of natural wonders, and as such are frankly
> > secondary.
If they help you to retain and amplify upon the experience, they serve
their purpose. Also, they are a means of communication between those
who have had the same experience.
> I'm reading Stephen Fry's _Hippopotamus_ at the moment, and interestingly,
> happened upon the following just now:
> <quote>
>
> As is natural at his age, he believes that poetry's sole function seems to
> lie in the description of nature. Keats, Clare, Wordsworth, selected
> Browning and Tennyson, that sort of jazz. I delicately put him right.
> 'No, no, no, you chump. You must have heard the expression "the
> egotistical sublime"?
I certainly did, and from a former Cabinet Secretary, too, several
years ago.
> These people aren't writing about dandelions and
> daisies, they're writing about themselves.
Nice line for the consumption of the superbrats of our time. Soon,
they will all be fancying themselves to be romantic poets, 19th
century type.
> Romantic poets are more obsessed
> with self than the most therapy-addicted Californian you can imagine.
Next thing we'll see, is that inordinate self-obsession is as much a
part of modern portry as bad grammar - as if it isn't so already!
> "_I_wandered lonely as a cloud", "_My_ heart aches", "_My_ heart leaps up".'
>
> <end quote>
There were also lots of other lines, not reflecting so much
"self-obsession". Shelley is considered inferior by many because of
this. (I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!) In Fry's examples,
it is not so much self-obsession as the desire to make the reader see
and feel what the poet sees and feels.
JimC
Michael S. Morris wrote:
[Schumann's "Mondnacht"]
> For example, Barbra Streisand does it
> on the album "Classical Barbra".
[...]
> It is, as I suggested however, a solo Lied, and not
> exactly a composition that a *chorister* would be expected
> to know about, since Lieder would typically not be
> encountered in a choral setting (though some are occasionally
> set for chorus).
I have that. It does have some chorales on it,
although I don't think any of it reaches sublimity
for me. The "Pavane", without chorus, is kind of
funny. She sings it scat style with "doo-dooo-
de-dooo". As long as she's doo-dooing pavanes, I
wish she would sing Ravel's "Pavane For a Dead
Princess" that way. The same piece is a short
pop song in Engish, "The Lamp Is Low".
Bruce McGuffin
> tejas wrote:
>
> >
> > The House on the Rock is still there; a veritable beacon. Did you go on a
> > Duck Ride at Wisconsin Dells after this?
>
> No, we went and had a pizza in Chicago!
>
>
> > Then there's the Mustard Museum in
> > Mount Horeb, just west of Madison.
> >
> > Ted
> >
> > ObBook: WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP (by Lesey or is it Losey?)
>
> whatever. I must read it.
otherobbook: Neil Gaimon, American Gods
JimC
OrOtherObBook: Jackie Lyden, _Daughter of the Queen of Sheba_
Growing up bipolar in Wisconsin. Lyden is this 5'0" ball of fire
who practically runs NPR and interviews people at war fronts.
It is a short memoir, and as she has explained elsewhere, not
necessarily all true. A curious feature of the book is that the writing
develops as she develops, as if she started writing it in college
and finished it in her 40s.
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> OrOtherObBook: Jackie Lyden, _Daughter of the Queen of Sheba_
> Growing up bipolar in Wisconsin. Lyden is this 5'0" ball of fire
> who practically runs NPR and interviews people at war fronts.
> It is a short memoir, and as she has explained elsewhere, not
> necessarily all true. A curious feature of the book is that the writing
> develops as she develops, as if she started writing it in college
> and finished it in her 40s.
Must've been hard to resist the temptation to polish the earlier entries!
Lewis Mammel
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>
> Many feelings about a moonlit night seem to me to be inherent
> in us as predatory animals, and in the natural phenomenon
> itself.
Ocius adducto torquens hastile lacerto,
suspiciens altam Lunam sic voce precatur:
`Tu, dea, tu praesens nostro succurre labori,
astrorum decus et nemorum Latonia custos
Siqua tuis umquam pro me pater Hyrtacus aris
dona tulit, siqua ipse meis venatibus auxi
suspendive tholo aut sacra ad fastigia fixi:
hunc sine me turbare globum et rege tela per auras.'
Dixerat, et toto conixus corpore ferrum
conicit: hasta volans noctis diverberat umbras
et venit aversi in tergum Sulmonis ibique
frangitur ac fisso transit praecordia ligno.
he swung his spear with lifted arm, then looked
to the still moon, in heaven, and thus implored:
O goddess, aid me in my evil case.
O glory of the stars, Latona's child!
O guardian of groves, if in my name
my father Hyrtacus made offerings
on burning altars, if my own right hand,
successful in the chase, ere hung its gift
beneath thy dome or on thy sacred wall,
grant me yon troop to scatter. Guide my spear
along its path in air. He spoke, and hurled
with all his gathered strength the shaft of steel.
the swift spear clove the shades of night, and struck
full in the back of Sulmo, where it split,
but tore through to his very heart.
... kind of a lot, but I thought it fit with your
predator comment.
I looked through on-line english versions of the Aeneid,
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Odyssey for mentions of the
moon, and these are fairly sparse. Most of them are poetic
references to the passage of time, "quam luna bis inpleat orbem"
yet this is still the poetic moon supposedly originated by
romanticism.
In Homer, the same formula occurs twice, wherein a building
with dazzling metallic appointments is said to gleam
like the sun or the moon. Pretty slim, but it does establish
the sun and moon as aesthetic standards, I should say.
Not to mention that they are personified as Helios and Selene -
literally nature worship.
Ovid has an elaborate comparison of a blushing boy to
the silvery moon turning red in an eclipse, and here is
a passage in the Aeneid which seems purely romantic:
Adspirant aurae in noctem nec candida cursus
Luna negat, splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus.
Freshly the night-winds breathe; the cloudless moon
Outpours upon his path unstinted beam,
And with far-trembling glory smites the sea.
... the 'nec ... negat' construction is interesting:
The air breathes softly in the night, nor blocks
the radiance of the scudding moon, the sea sparkling
tremulously beneath its light. ( Me )
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
> Not to mention that they are personified as Helios and Selene -
> literally nature worship.
As a teacher, I've been worried by the ever expanding abuse of the word
"literally" for quite some time. It's rapidly becoming synonymous with
"figuratively."
The practice you're referring to is literally the worship of gods.
Helios and Selene. If it were literally the worship of nature, they'd
call the objects of worship "sun" and "moon." As demonstrated by the
stories about Helios and Selene. They don't act like really pieces of rock.
francis muir
<sm...@ameritech.net> wrote:
English is rich in words that have changed meaning through 180 degrees.
David J. Loftus
> Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> > Not to mention that they are personified as Helios and Selene -
> > literally nature worship.
>
>
> As a teacher, I've been worried by the ever expanding abuse of the word
> "literally" for quite some time. It's rapidly becoming synonymous with
> "figuratively."
Not just "figuratively," but just plain "rilly rilly."
Lee Lorenz, the longtime cartoon editor for the New Yorker, did one
many years ago (at least 15 -- I have it in a collection of his work
entitled _Now Look What You've Done!_; in that particular cartoon a
hen is saying this to a befuddled newborn chick still sitting among
the shards of the egg out of which he just popped) in which a business
executive behind a huge desk is saying to a shamefaced underling:
"Confound it, Fenster, when I said I meant that literally, it was just
a figure of speech!"
David Loftus
joe green
Sidney was down with the moon. I like the second sonnet!
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languisht grace
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?
Whether the Turkish new-moon minded be
To fill his horns this year on Christian coast;
How Poles' right king means without leave of host,
To warm with ill-made fire cold Muscovy;
If French can yet three parts in one agree;
What now the Dutch in their full diets boast;
How Holland hearts, now so good towns be lost,
Trust in the shade of pleasing Orange-tree;
How Ulster likes of that same golden bit
Wherewith my father once made it half tame;
If in the Scotch Court be no welt'ring yet:
These questions busy wits to me do frame.
I, cumbered with good manners, answer do,
But know not how, for still I think of you.
smw
francis muir wrote:
ObEssay: _Der Gegensinn der Urworte_
francis muir
<sm...@ameritech.net> wrote:
I'm dead chuffed.
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 8th of August, 2003
I wrote:
[Schumann's "Mondnacht"]
For example, Barbra Streisand does it
on the album "Classical Barbra".
[...]
It is, as I suggested however, a solo Lied, and not
exactly a composition that a *chorister* would be expected
to know about, since Lieder would typically not be
encountered in a choral setting (though some are occasionally
set for chorus).
Jim Collier:
I have that. It does have some chorales on it,
although I don't think any of it reaches sublimity
for me. [...]
I ordered it. Not so much for "Mondnacht", which I've ordered
in several versions, but because I'd been told she had recorded
"In Trutina" from "Carmina Burana", and I wanted to hear that.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Lewis Mammel
smw wrote:
>
> Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> > Not to mention that they are personified as Helios and Selene -
> > literally nature worship.
>
> As a teacher, I've been worried by the ever expanding abuse of the word
> "literally" for quite some time. It's rapidly becoming synonymous with
> "figuratively."
I used the term "literally" in contradistinction to the figurative
use of the term when applied to activities representative of
an enthusiastic appreciation of nature, as when hikers or birders
are called "nature worshippers" or sun bathers called "sun worshippers."
Your attribution of this usage error to me is based on a quibble,
and an insupportible one at that. I meant what I said, and
popular usages such as "My head is literally exploding" etc.
have no bearing.
Note that these usages typically apply a concrete figure
to an abstract situation. In my case "nature worship" is an
abstract classification and not a concrete figure.
But what is "nature worship" ?
How about "a system of religion that deifies and worships
natural forces and phenomena" ? ( http://dict.die.net/nature%20worship/ )
Will that do? Then if one deifies the sun and the moon,
isn't that literally nature worship? Honestly!
> The practice you're referring to is literally the worship of gods.
> Helios and Selene. If it were literally the worship of nature, they'd
> call the objects of worship "sun" and "moon."
Well this is a real BWA HA HA. What do you suppose the greek words for
sun and moon are? The homeric passage I alluded to is:
os te gar heliou aigle pelen he selenes
for there was a gleam like the sun or the moon
Helios is the sun PERSONIFIED, i.e. he is the sun -
"Each morning at dawn he rises from the ocean in the east and rides
in his chariot, pulled by four horses - Pyrois, Eos, Aethon and Phlegon
-- through the sky, to descend at night in the west."
( http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/helios.html )
> As demonstrated by the
> stories about Helios and Selene. They don't act like really pieces of rock.
Well they weren't, they were gods. This penchant for personification
is by no means unknown to us today. Recall Our_Mr._Sun, the Bell Labs
Science Series film. The title character was a cartoon who spoke to
the scientists throughout the film. They would show a film record of
a spectacular prominence, and Our Mr. Sun would remark, "Oh yes, I
really blew my top that day!"
Now was Our Mr.Sun the sun, or wasn't he ? Well of course he was not
the actual sun, he was a cartoon! Yet, he was the sun, else how
could he recall having blown his top?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> smw wrote:
>
>>Lewis Mammel wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Not to mention that they are personified as Helios and Selene -
>>>literally nature worship.
>>>
>>As a teacher, I've been worried by the ever expanding abuse of the word
>>"literally" for quite some time. It's rapidly becoming synonymous with
>>"figuratively."
>>
>
> I used the term "literally" in contradistinction to the figurative
> use of the term when applied to activities representative of
> an enthusiastic appreciation of nature, as when hikers or birders
> are called "nature worshippers" or sun bathers called "sun worshippers."
>
> Your attribution of this usage error to me is based on a quibble,
> and an insupportible one at that. I meant what I said, and
> popular usages such as "My head is literally exploding" etc.
> have no bearing.
wriggle on, my dear. as I said (and now you say):
>> Well they weren't [pieces of rock], they were gods.
You're doing the usual Bildungsbuergermove, projecting denatured
humanity's nostalgia onto the Greeks who were smart enough to know that
it doesn't make sense to worship trees or rocks unless you turn them
into figures. And then worship them figuratively.
> Helios is the sun PERSONIFIED, i.e. he is the sun -
Well, no. He is the sun personified, i.e. he is not the sun, the sun not
being a person.
There's really no need to be all that defensive. You're in some good and
certainly in lots of company.
Jeff Inman
Wouldn't a worshipped sun be something unreduced? It must
be numinous and yet also The Sun. Maybe sometimes
the figurative is literal.
Jeff
Louis Katorz
>I ordered it. Not so much for "Mondnacht",
>which I've ordered in several versions, but
>because I'd been told she had recorded
>"In Trutina" from "Carmina Burana", and I
>wanted to hear that.
Quite some time ago PBS aired "Carmina Burana" sung by a Japanese choral
group. I can't recall the name.
In 1987 I attended the first US performance of The Tokyo Konsei (Mixed
Voices), a distinguished professional concert chorus, founded in 1956.
It was a thrilling performance, superbly sung. The applause was such
that the group sang four encores. Rummaging, I found the concert
program:
Joji Yuasa: Six Poems from "Projection on Basho's Haiku"
Toru Takemitsu: Wind Horse
Minao Shibata: Study on Oiwake-bushi
Palestrina: Kyrie
Orlando Di Lasso: Echo
Monteverdi: Ecco Mormorare L'Ondi
Shinichiro Ikebe: The Folk Songs of Orient 1.
Louis Katorz
>The sublime as an aesthetic experience is
>a feeing of awe or wonder, as one might
>feel from seeing the Grand Canyon or
>Niagara Falls for the first time. Can you
>get a sublime feeling from reading a
>book? I would suggest no, from the
>finiteness of the medium.
Watched David Eckert's "Culinary Travels" on the telly this afternoon.
He profiled Michel Chapoutier, a première vintner of
Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Remarking on the quality of the wines, Eckert
stated: "...but whichever wine you choose, they are sublime." Reckon
some think Dom Perignon champagne is also sublime.
This may also apply to foods. Some may find truffles or beluga caviar to
be sublime. Or even some "comfort foods".
Lewis Mammel
Jeff Inman wrote:
>
> smw wrote:
> > Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> > > Helios is the sun PERSONIFIED, i.e. he is the sun -
> >
> > Well, no. He is the sun personified, i.e. he is not the sun, the sun not
> > being a person.
>
> Wouldn't a worshipped sun be something unreduced? It must
> be numinous and yet also The Sun.
I certainly agree. An objective conception of it precludes
any worship, as for example by Aristotle, except he does say
some strange stuff. For example he talks about the moon and
stars lacking organs of locomotion. We're like, "Whaaaaa ?"
> Maybe sometimes
> the figurative is literal.
Of course, to think of these personifications as "figurative"
requires a dominating habit of objective conceptualization.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Don Tuite
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Jeff Inman wrote:
>> Maybe sometimes
>> the figurative is literal.
>
>Of course, to think of these personifications as "figurative"
>requires a dominating habit of objective conceptualization.
Careful, or it'll be dung beetles all the way down.
Don
Lewis Mammel
Well, it's just a question of the ontological status of
objectivity. The realization that it's an acquired habit
can be a temptation to a relativistic view of ontology.
"That he represented it to be an argument for the truth
that Ptolemaics became Copernicans, but not vice versa."
- seventh of eight points of Galileo's Dialogue
deemed offensive to the Church
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Jeff Inman wrote:
Worship is predicated on figuration, narrative, metapher (i.e. linking
of the unlinked). Take "nature" -- what the hell is that even supposed
to be, beyond figurations?
Lewis Mammel
Mmmmm. You're saying there can't be any such thing as "literal"
nature worship, since "nature worship" is, as I stipulated, an
abstract classification.
"natura" is from "natu" - "by birth" . From Chambers & Murray -
" blood relationship, natural affinity Lit. : natura tu illi
pater es, Ter. ..." ( well, there's "literally" ) but then
"2. Transf. a. the nature, i.e. natural constitution or features ...
c. the nature, course, or order of things"
So we arrive at "nature" by abstraction, not by a figure.
The figure for nature was "Mother Earth" .
Anyway, Webster's gives for "literal" "... b : adhering to fact or to
the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression:
ACTUAL, OBVIOUS" . You seem to want to confine the term to mean an
actual instance of a concrete figure - "a literal can of worms",
"a literal bottle neck", "a literal pinprick" etc.
So as I explained, the deification of the sun and the moon conforms
to the primary meaning of "nature worship" - it's ACTUAL nature worship.
This is in contrast to the popular usage today meaning "enthusiasm for
nature" or "appreciation of nature" - attitudes which seem to have
originated with romanticism.
BTW, Websters also gives the second meaning, "virtually" , for
"literally" , and even gives a note of justification -
USAGE Since sense 2 is the opposite in meaning of sense 1,
it has been frequently criticized as misuse. Instead, the
use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it
often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis
is necessary.
Now very possibly, Webster's sense 1 is a liberalized version of
a purist form of "literal," which may justify you in bemoaning it.
I'm just saying that I was using sense 1, and not sense 2 .
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Arindam Banerjee
> smw wrote:
> >
> > Jeff Inman wrote:
> >
> > > smw wrote:
> > >
> > >>Lewis Mammel wrote:
> > >>
>
> > >>>Helios is the sun PERSONIFIED, i.e. he is the sun -
> > >>>
> > >>Well, no. He is the sun personified, i.e. he is not the sun, the sun not
> > >>being a person.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Wouldn't a worshipped sun be something unreduced? It must
> > > be numinous and yet also The Sun. Maybe sometimes
> > > the figurative is literal.
> >
> > Worship is predicated on figuration, narrative, metapher (i.e. linking
> > of the unlinked). Take "nature" -- what the hell is that even supposed
> > to be, beyond figurations?
>
> Mmmmm. You're saying there can't be any such thing as "literal"
> nature worship, since "nature worship" is, as I stipulated, an
> abstract classification.
Quite. Not Nature, but Gods and Goddesses are worshipped, by
polytheists. The sun is not worshipped; the God Surya, Whose visible
and knowable form is that of the sun, is worshipped. Similarly a
river is not worshipped, it is the Goddess who is in the form of the
river (say the Goddess Ganga) Who is worshipped. To a polytheist, a
river is not a flow of water, it is Divine, like any manifestation of
Nature to any sentient being.
Arindam Banerjee.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> smw wrote:
>
>>Jeff Inman wrote:
...
>>>Wouldn't a worshipped sun be something unreduced? It must
>>>be numinous and yet also The Sun. Maybe sometimes
>>>the figurative is literal.
>>>
>>Worship is predicated on figuration, narrative, metapher (i.e. linking
>>of the unlinked). Take "nature" -- what the hell is that even supposed
>>to be, beyond figurations?
>>
>
> Mmmmm. You're saying there can't be any such thing as "literal"
> nature worship, since "nature worship" is, as I stipulated, an
> abstract classification.
That, or, as in the deification of Helios and Selene (or Gaia or Uranus
etc), something entirely different.
> "natura" is from "natu" - "by birth" . From Chambers & Murray -
> " blood relationship, natural affinity Lit. : natura tu illi
> pater es, Ter. ..." ( well, there's "literally" ) but then
> "2. Transf. a. the nature, i.e. natural constitution or features ...
> c. the nature, course, or order of things"
>
> So we arrive at "nature" by abstraction, not by a figure.
There are many routes to the non-literal indeed.
> The figure for nature was "Mother Earth" .
Not really, since "Mother Earth" usually appears in conjunctions with
other figures: Gaia/Uranus. Which brings us back to "Mondnacht" -- "es
war als haett der Himmel die Erde still gekuesst" (it was as if
heaven/the sky [m.] had quietly kissed earth [f.])
> Anyway, Webster's gives for "literal" "... b : adhering to fact or to
> the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression:
> ACTUAL, OBVIOUS" . You seem to want to confine the term to mean an
> actual instance of a concrete figure - "a literal can of worms",
> "a literal bottle neck", "a literal pinprick" etc.
I want to exclude from the "literal meaning" of "the sun" men riding
chariots etc.
>
> So as I explained, the deification of the sun and the moon conforms
> to the primary meaning of "nature worship" - it's ACTUAL nature worship.
Nah, it's still actually god worship. But keep trying.
...
> Now very possibly, Webster's sense 1 is a liberalized version of
> a purist form of "literal," which may justify you in bemoaning it.
> I'm just saying that I was using sense 1, and not sense 2.
Literally. Uh, virtually.
smw
The Other wrote:
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> writes:
>
>
>>Worship is predicated on figuration, narrative, metapher
>>(i.e. linking of the unlinked).
>>
>
> Even the earliest worship? I thought people used to decorate and
> worship certain trees -- not the dryads who lived in the trees, but
> the trees themselves. I don't remember where I read that, though.
>
> And who needs this figuration, narrative, and metaphor? The sun rises
> in the east and sets in the west; it heats the earth more in the
> summer and less in the winter. Eternal cycles -- a perfect setting
> for worship, even without fiery chariots or horsemen.
>
> It seems really counter-intuitive that people first personified the
> sun, and only then started worshiping it (him). But even supposing
> that was the way it happened, is it really the way it *had* to happen
> (your "predicated")?
You think there's worship without culture, or culture without metaphor?
That strikes me as far more counter-intuitive than anything I said or am
read to have said.
> There are ancient pagan writings stating that
> the idol is not the god, only a representation.
what ancient pagan writings are those? are we getting close to 39 words
for snow, by any chance?
> If somebody thought
> it necessary to assert that, then maybe it wasn't obvious? Note that
> worshiping an idol itself wouldn't involve personification or
> metaphor -- at least not like worshiping the god Helios, whom the
> worshiper *understands* to be distinct from his manifestation as that
> big yellow disk in the sky.
Worship involves hierarchy; hierarchy involves system; system involves
analogy; analogy involves metaphor.
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> Worship involves hierarchy; hierarchy involves system; system involves
> analogy; analogy involves metaphor.
The cheese stands alone. :)
Lewis Mammel
The Other wrote:
>
> It seems really counter-intuitive that people first personified the
> sun, and only then started worshiping it (him). But even supposing
> that was the way it happened, is it really the way it *had* to happen
> (your "predicated")? There are ancient pagan writings stating that
> the idol is not the god, only a representation. If somebody thought
> it necessary to assert that, then maybe it wasn't obvious? Note that
> worshiping an idol itself wouldn't involve personification or
> metaphor -- at least not like worshiping the god Helios, whom the
> worshiper *understands* to be distinct from his manifestation as that
> big yellow disk in the sky.
Under animism, everything is personified. All that is required is
the attribution of agency:
And now the sun, leaving the beauteous water surface,
sprang up into the brazen heaven to give light to the
immortals and to mortal men on the earth. - Odyssey III.1
Helios d' anorouse - Helios sprang up.
Later Ares lies with Aphrodite
... and shamed the bed of the lord Hephaestus. But
immediately Helios came to him to tell him, for he had
seen them lying together in love. - Odyssey VIII.271
That's very logical don't you think? Helios sees everything while
he's up there. This is the same Helios.
BTW, the "big yellow disk in the sky" is every bit as conventional
as Helios from whom "bright rays beam dazzingly". Go out at noon on
a clear summer day and tell me which is more accurate.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Stephen Hayes
francis muir wrote in a message to All:
fm> English is rich in words that have changed meaning through 180
fm> degrees.
Liberal and conservative are two frequently-sued examples.
Keep well
Steve Hayes
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail: haye...@yahoo.com
FamilyNet <> Internet Gated Mail
http://www.fmlynet.org
smw
The Other wrote:
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> writes:
>
>
>>The Other wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It seems really counter-intuitive that people first personified
>>>the sun, and only then started worshiping it (him). But even
>>>supposing that was the way it happened, is it really the way it
>>>*had* to happen (your "predicated")?
>>>
>>You think there's worship without culture, or culture without metaphor?
>>That strikes me as far more counter-intuitive than anything I said or am
>>read to have said.
>>
>
> Of course I don't think that. I just think that you can worship the
> sun, for instance, without personifying it as some god. Mr. Intuition
> says, concrete objects and behavior precede abstractions.
Perhaps. But most certainly, abstraction precedes worship. Worship is an
abstraction, after all.
Arindam Banerjee
Organised methods of worship involve hierarchy. Unorganised methods
of worship relate to kinship, where hierarchy is not the only or even
main issue; and where there is a wide latitude for personal
relationships with the Divine. A system of worship using unorganised
methods is much more loose and flexible, as a result. Analogy relates
to the richness and diversity of flora and fauna, and the human's
level of comprehension and identification with same. Metaphor relates
not only to nature, but also to abstractions of same, relating to
mythology. Mythology, if seen merely as literature, unites those
adhering to unorganised methods of worship.
Kater Moggin
> Personally, I like "Under the Big Black Sun",
> speaking of ancient history.
ObFlick: _American History X_.
-- Moggin
to e-mail, remove the thorn
Stephen Hayes
Irina Bondarenko Feeney wrote in a message to All:
IBF> From: "Irina Bondarenko Feeney" <ir...@feeney9142.freenet.co.uk>
IBF> I thought it was really good. Stephen Fry was perfect Oscar. And
IBF> of course there was Jude Law, stud muffin extraordinaire.
Do stud muffins come in different flavours?
David J. Loftus
> FamilyNet Newsgate
>
> Irina Bondarenko Feeney wrote in a message to All:
>
> IBF> From: "Irina Bondarenko Feeney" <ir...@feeney9142.freenet.co.uk>
>
> IBF> I thought it was really good. Stephen Fry was perfect Oscar. And
> IBF> of course there was Jude Law, stud muffin extraordinaire.
>
> Do stud muffins come in different flavours?
They must. Even Jude Law in "AI" or "Gattaca" was preferable
to Jude Law in "Wilde."
David Loftus