I think Arnold was right about charlatanism's modus operandi. It
serves the interests of the charlatan very well for the distinctions
between "sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only
half true" to be eroded. Many of those who would govern us are
charlatans in precisely that sense.
I am all for the construction of canons of excellence. They give you
something to argue about. Jazz lovers do it, boxing fans do it, why
shouldn't literary folk?
Dominic
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 16:11:49 -0500, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alison, Hey--
>
> Thanks for this--sorry to hear of the flu, hoping you'll soon be well.
> In fact I almost said, "but cheer up! spring's around the corner,"
> until I realized it would be a very long and wintry corner for you as
> my geographical-global-centrism had the entire world on the brink of a
> Texas spring :)
>
> I hadn't posted the link here, no, but it's linked on my Texfiles
> responses.
> What a hoot, all this is, eh? I had a good laugh over your Ruth and
> thanks for the tip on Foucault, I had forgotten about that one!
>
> And, then, here's this:
>
> Do I know Mr. Chris Murray?
> Yes, I woke one day
> to find him lounging in my bed--
>
> uttering obscenity or something
> I could not tell but he's
> a real cad, no proper man,
> certainly no Victorian
> lad at all, just a bit of rabble
>
> rousing street wandering f%$#ing mouth
> of flapping Icarus,
> full of pagan
> want, or maybe it's Yalie
> inferiority--
>
> no proper Harvard soul*--
> which is why I don't know why
> I ever let myself read that "he"-man,
>
> saying such bad words to me,
> when I am a great academic,
>
> I am a
> "The"
>
> American
> thinker
>
> except it's just so
> fun to fight with him--
>
> it makes me feel so much better:
> we are just two happy boxing gloves
>
> on the same person's hands, a whap
> and whop and wholloping 'army of two' **--
>
> that is until some nice soft breast or other
> intervenes to keep us all milked and mothered
>
> in happy Republican U.S. world orders
> ever and ever after never
>
> thinking to be bothered
> by the chain of wars for oil
>
> a world of casualties,
> the real
>
> blood
> & bodies rotting
>
> outside "The"
> Thinker
>
> *According to his biography at the site, T. Lifson,
> editor at _American (St)(Th) inker_
> has several degrees from Harvard
>
> ** the most recent obnoxious slogan for the U.S. army is "An Army of
> One"
> which is meant to appeal especially to youngsters like my son, who
> recruiters
> bombard with such rhetorical crap until they join up...
>
> Well, Alison, thanks so much for the encouragement and for looking into
> M.Arnold--an interesting figure
> whose rhetoric, as you point out, cannot help but be in league, if only
> by (Victorian) default,
> with imperialism and it's hypocritical agenda of colonizing with the
> excuse of serving
> 'moral' standards.
>
> My take on it all also questions what interests are being served by
> this retro business
> of reinstituting a monumental kind of value/moral system--people in
> large numbers
> seem so taken by this kind of thinking every time it rolls around.
> In my opinion it mostly provides an excuse not to have to
> think hard on hard questions. Alas.
>
> Best Wishes,
> chris
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 03:45:31 +1000
> Subject: Re: Vitriol
>
> Hi Chris
>
> Up late again (bad sleep for the past few nights, shocking flu, fever &c
> bleah) and noticed this, which I had overlooked; I also don't think the
> url
> has been posted where that impudent gentleman Mr Chris Murray gets his
> hand
> slapped (tsk!) Do you know him?
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4345
>
> I see that Matthew Arnold is the keynote thinker of this particular
> article
> ("In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the
> eternal
> honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere
> be
> kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or
> obliterating
> the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or
> only
> half-sound, true and untrue or only half true. It is charlatanism,
> conscious
> or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry,
> more
> than anywhere else, it is unpermissable to confuse or obliterate them.")
>
> As Arnold is the acme of the imperialist poet, who thought culture had
> the
> sacred duty above all to support the Empire, I guess this makes sense.
> Culture is to Arnold the "best" that is thought and done; but who
> determines
> that "best" is a tricky one. Eternal honor, hmmm. Is it defined by
> being
> not-charlatanism? Or does one simply recognises such "glory" straight
> away,
> by dazzlement, maybe? I really don't know though about the virginal
> quality
> of poetry outlined here, unviolated by, well, anything, but looking
> dazedly
> and gloriously out from its viewpoint high above the soiled hurly burly
> of
> the inferior world...
>
> There are certain canonical works that I couldn't do without. I would
> never
> eschew Shakespeare, for instance, or various other dead white males
> considered great; I like their work too much. What I would query is what
> that status makes of their work - how it makes dead and oppressive
> cultural
> momuments out of them, instead of living, dynamic and fertile works.
> But
> how a culture ingests and neutralises works of art, and how this is
> resisted, is one of the ongoing battles. Is art merely to embellish and
> celebrate Authority, or is it for something else?
>
> As for soul - I've always rather liked that Foucault definition, that a
> soul
> is the marks and traces left by various authorities across a human
> psyche.
> I used this idea for a monologue once, a character called Ruth, in a
> play
> which also quoted lots of Rilke:
>
> "They went away and then they came back and then they went away again
> and
> then they came back. Policemen with wings like bats. An old man with
> the
> face of a baby. The busdriver with a hacksaw. Children with teeth like
> dogs. I knew what they looked like even though I never saw them. I
> only
> heard them.
>
> "They laughed at me. All of them.
>
> "They took my soul and they drew all over it with their claws.
> Crisscross
> crisscross. Teachers. Mum. The babies. The police. The judges.
> Crisscross crisscross. The doctors. Dad. The lawyers. The
> newspapers.
> The social workers. The nurses. The schoolkids. Crisscross crisscross.
> And that was my soul. This poor ragged thing what everybody walked
> across
> and tore and wrote on. They wrote everything on it. Everything. It
> got so
> I couldnąt even read my own name. But then I remembered. I
> remembered at
> last.
>
> "I went down to the river to look into the water but I didnąt see
> nothing.
> All the drowned girls came out and stood on the banks. They stood there
> shivering and they said, come in, come in. But I didnąt. And they said,
> Ruth, come in. And I remembered my name, and I said, no. I said, no, I
> donąt want to. I remembered my name and I said no. And thatąs when the
> trouble started."
>
> But now I really am rambling. And so to bed...
>
> Best
>
> A
>
> On 25/3/05 4:29 AM, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Hi Alison--thanks for the good words. I thought the gender issue
> > interesting, too. I noticed here in scanning the recent messages that
> > there was some talk on Camille Paglia'a new (weak and weird) book--it
> > was a quote from her intro, along with the opening line in Alyssa
> > Lappen's article that caught my attention--Lappen's line is "Poetry is
> > a window on the soul," and Paglia echoes that assumptive (and in my
> > opinion, romanticist crap) notion. I paired up the two and wrote a
> > couple of sentences taking issue with their notion of poetic
> > "soul"--who's soul might it be, I wonder, and who's notion of "the"
> > soul?--on my blog. That seems to be what irritated this _American
> > Thinker_ editor, since he tried to reaffirm the notion by starting his
> > own 'hateful' editorial by requoting it with great reverence. Sheesh!
> > Now we cannot even debate historicized notions of what poetry might be
> > with coming under right wing ridicule and attack.
> >
> > But then, too: it's good to clear the air somewhat with these crackpot
> > thinkers, so, yeah: let's just call what they're trying to pass off as
> > defensible, reasonable argument, just plain old, same old, *bullshit*.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > best,
> > c
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
--
// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
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