On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Peter Larkin wrote:
> If John is suggesting that British culture has
> remained retrospective and autumnal, perhaps a continuation of
> the Decadence from a modernist perspective, this seems less the case
> with the non-verbal arts. It really doesn't figure at all in British
> Land Art (despite the successful drawing on a local tradition) and
> can't be find either in the music of Michael Tippett. They may be
> drawing on another thread (and that is in McSweeney too) ie a sort of
> convolute numinous radiance which has an extraordinary sense of the
> present.
- I don't totally agree about Tippett, who seemed to invest quite heavily
in the retrospective/autumnal... but I see what you mean, and it's a point
at which I can not-inappropriately bring in Mottram's _Elegies_ which have
been much in my mind during this thread. It seems to me that there are
occasions in that series when the *only* thing elegaic about it is the
word, Elegy, in the title: the "matter" is firmly in the radiant present.
The word "celebration" springs to mind, as poised between the living and
the dead, a point for ongoing research - as ever in EM's case.
RC
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