I thought I was being clear that I meant relevance to practice, but
maybe not. Lots of us still learn from Sappho (or our construction of
Sappho). Fewer of us, I think, learn from Eliot. Even Eliot rarely
learned from Eliot, tho he learned a lot from Pound.
Note that I'm not talking about learning as discipleship or
imitation. Rather, a question of whether being in dialogue with the
work becomes part of one's own process. Prufrock does little for me,
Among School Children does a lot more.
Mark
At 09:02 PM 3/27/2006, you wrote:
>On 28/3/06 10:28 AM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I don't think I discounted feeling, Alison. I frankly have no idea
> > what you're trying to say.
>
>Well, I was answering in a necessary shorthand your assertion that my claim
>that what matters most in art is feeling meant that art had nothing to do
>with human life. Shorthand because most people mistake this for an argument
>against intelligence, or for art as mere self expression.
>
>For the record, I think that in art, feeling and thought are very nearly the
>same thing. Note that I do not say that they are the same thing: simply that
>one is the necessary condition for the other, that to be aware of feeling
>requires thought, to be aware of thought requires feeling. And I truly do
>believe that this kind of awareness is what art can articulate better than
>any other human activity, and this is where for me its value exists. I also
>think that feeling is something embedded in all aspects of human life, since
>it is the basis of consciousness itself; so art for me has everything to do
>with human life.
>
>This part of the discussion began with a judgment of your part of
>"relevance", which is something that to my mind is pretty much a secondary
>consideration. But the cry that art must be relevant is a very common way of
>making it subordinate to certain other necessities - eg, pedagogies, social
>affect, commodity or social status etc. It's the big PR word when people are
>trying sell art ("it's relevant!") And the usual result is to minimise or
>marginalise what in fact art does, in favour of more easily digestible uses.
>I'm not saying that connotation is what you meant, though it's the most
>common usage of it in connection to art; but if relevance is the thing that
>matters, why bother with Sappho?
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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