lets not forget Kant.
On Wed, Jan 1, 2003 at 2:38 AM, Ana Olinto <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> what i'm calling for is not "explanation" of works of art, but critical
> principles.
> here are some people who, in my view, could be said to be great and radical
> art thinkers, people who really shaped basic principles:
> aristotle, coleridge, pound, eliot, valéry.
> in visual arts:
> leonardo, heinrich wölfflin, erwin panofsky, cézanne, kandinsky, francis
> bacon.
> in music:
> igor stravinsky.
> none of them has ever attempted to "explain" a work of art and much less an
> artist's mind.
> x-ana
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Angel Marquez" <
> [log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 5:28 PM
>
> Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>
>
> I've always despised walking through a museum and having a third party
> attempt to convince me what the artist was thinking when they were creating
> based on a bunch of rumored factoids. I think that defeats the entire
> purpose of what art is all about.
> Explanation ruins expression.
>
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 9:19 PM, Ana Olinto <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> alison, blind "generalization" is one thing, philosophical reasoning -
>> which
>> necessarily work with some generalization, for reasoning is thinking and
>> we necessarily think in generals, as we feel in particulars - is quite
>> another.
>> i miss precisely the mutual fertilization of thinking and feeling in
>> today's
>> world.
>> i do appreciate the novel form, its architecture, and often think how my
>> favourite novelists are more profound, complex and even more modern and
>> better writers than most poets.
>> you are right when you say philosophy "doesn't reach beyond the ratio" and
>> the reason for that is that it is rigorous reason by definition. when you
>> said
>> desborders' book deals with some philosophical issues, it ocurred to me
>> that if the way in which she grasped them was especially systematic and
>> coherent she could even have studied philosophy and written a
>> philosophical
>> treatise - it was an extreme idea, a provocation; i don't know her work,
>> only
>> know she is a novelist, and, knowing the novelist's general state of mind,
>> i
>> think it's certainly more likely that she would better have written a long
>> meditative poem, perhaps with some narrative - the best narrative
>> achievements from the novel - parts.
>> on the other hand, i think you are right when you say poetry is far from
>> popular in today's world. and you would also be right if you said i can't,
>> with
>> my reasoning, stop most people - even the most informed and even cultured
>> people - from prefering novels, and even more the cinema, and ignoring
>> poetry,
>> painting and serious reasoning.
>> i think the most serious artists nowadays, the ones most serious about
>> form
>> - and
>> its shaping of content - , can only be one more tribe, just as the hip-hop
>> is one,
>> the drum'n bass is another, and the neo-punk another - and i'm not joking:
>> i think this is the good and the bad of democracy.
>> x------------ana
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 8:53 PM
>>
>> Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>>
>>
>> Hi Judy - The US has Melville, what else does it want? I guess I get
>> tired of generalisations... they almost always dissolve when you
>> actually look at them. If there are problems, which there are
>> everywhere, it can't be about history. Russian literature dates itself
>> from Pushkin, which makes its history much shorter than than the US.
>> If there's anything weird it's the idea that writing is professional
>> and needs qualifications and ends up being a career, like entering a
>> corporation. That's fairly corrosive.
>>
>> Ana, The novel is a gorgeous form. I find myself fascinated by its
>> architecture, by everything you can put in it. It's like any writing,
>> it can be whatever you make it. All you have to do is imagine it. (In
>> talking about the dance, everyone has forgotten Tristram Shandy and
>> Swift's bizarre adventures like Tale of a Tub. Or Melville). If a
>> novel were simply narrative + philosophy, with character puppets
>> illustrating some abstract point, what would be the point? It's
>> narrative + philosophy + sensual and emotional imagination.
>>
>> The value of Desbordes is she evokes people who disappeared through
>> the cracks of history, who never presumed to have a philosophy or a
>> voice, and in the humility of her imagining is something much more
>> complex and humane than can be reached by philosophy, which seldom by
>> its nature reaches beyond the ratio. I don't claim a novel is superior
>> to poetry or anything else (or that poetry is superior, or whatever):
>> those arguments are insane. But I do value novels, and I do think the
>> form is far from dead. Certainly people have not stopped reading
>> novels, like they've stopped reading poetry, and we have both popular
>> and art forms, which all art forms need to stay lively. It's hard to
>> think of poetry as a popular form, except maybe in children's books.
>> I've never known much or cared much about fashion.
>>
>> xA
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:03 AM, Judy
>> Prince<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> And again, Ana, I can only echo "YES!" to what you've written!
>>> I believe, at least for my native country USAmerica, that becoming
>>> 'famous'
>>> or 'sanctioned' or 'well known', or of course 'a bestseller', defines our
>>> writer aims.
>>>
>>> In USAmerica, as well, we've a tradition supporting superficiality; we've
>>> little history; we're a hodge-podge of ethnicities; we're loose in a big
>>> pond of little identity-crises'ed fishes, making our own insignia,
>>> logoes,
>>> impressa, shields, crests.
>>>
>>> We seldom react to our perceived past going back more than a generation.
>>> An
>>> abiding, divisive, brutal, long-accrued story belongs to others, not to
>>> us.
>>> Our hate is contemporary; our philosophy is William James; our music is
>>> not
>>> ours unless it's African-American, southern white, or native American, so
>>> we
>>> denigrate these.
>>>
>>> We haven't a THINKING tradition; we haven't a WORD-LOVE tradition. We
>>> have
>>> a marketing, money-making tradition.
>>>
>>> How, then, can we have excellent novels, short stories, plays, or poems?
>>> We
>>> cannot, except for the exceptional: TS Eliot.
>>>
>>> I love Chekhov's short stories. I love Lermontov, Gogol----but not
>>> Tolstoy
>>> whose thought ran less subtly and less deeply than the others.
>>>
>>> I enjoy your messages thoroughly!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Judy
>>>
>>> 2003/1/1 Ana Olinto <[log in to unmask]>
>>>
>>> alison, i think i should admit, with judy, that i usually don't read
>>> many
>>>
>>>> novels - in my case, contemporary ones, i do read some earlier ones -
>>>> and
>>>> that, in consequence, i'm not the best person to talk about them - in my
>>>> case,
>>>> not about contemporary ones.
>>>> but i think it would be also interesting to ask us why.
>>>> i'm no, as my posts may suggest, sectarian. my favourite novelist may
>>>> well
>>>> be
>>>> dostoievsky - the opposite of valéry; i prefer a good
>>>> contemporary neo-classical musical composition than most - in fact all -
>>>> contemporary musical "geniuses" i know.
>>>> my favourite contemporary poet here in brazil is alberto cunha melo,
>>>> despised by the avant-garde and self-confessed "neo-classic" who
>>>> tastes like the past and for most of the time writes in octossylabes.
>>>> i must admit that the reason i don't add contemporary novelists to my
>>>> list of good contemporary artists is plainly because i don't read
>>>> contemporary novels, and the reason for that is plainly that, contrary
>>>> to listen to a cd and reading one poem, it takes a lot of time to do
>>>> that.
>>>> the contemporary novelists you cite may well be more contemporary
>>>> - and better - than alberto da cunha melo's poetry - they most likely
>>>> are.
>>>> yet, i do worship dr. faustus.
>>>> the question is, i tend to see as dispersive too much attention to too
>>>> many
>>>> -
>>>> or too recent - novels. we should be whole, integral beings, and i think
>>>> a
>>>> philosophical grounding is as important - and in some aspects more -
>>>> than
>>>> art.
>>>> i think hermann broch is the last novelist i see as fundamental. when
>>>> you
>>>> say
>>>> someone has just written a novel which studies "silence and selfhood", i
>>>> tend to
>>>> think it would be more enlightening to write a philosophical treatise on
>>>> such themes
>>>> - in the manner of husserl, whitehead or bergson, three twentieth
>>>> century
>>>> philosophers of whom i'm fond, from completely different schools - or a
>>>> philosophical "meditative" poem on them, such as eliot's four quartets
>>>> is
>>>> a
>>>> meditative poem on the theme "time" - and i certainly wouldn't recommend
>>>> her to
>>>> write it in husserl's or whitehead's of bergson's or eliot's style, but,
>>>> quite
>>>> enthusiastically, in michele desborders' .
>>>> what i'm questioning is not the talent or insights of all contemporary
>>>> novelists,
>>>> but the contemporaryness of the novel form. however unusual and
>>>> surprising
>>>> a
>>>> novel may be, it does takes what frederick called a sustained
>>>> "relentless
>>>> cumulative
>>>> power" to write one, and i'm questioning the presence of this power in
>>>> today's
>>>> world.
>>>> it is not the narrative form that i see as out of fashion - though i do
>>>> see
>>>> the
>>>> dancing, no-aim feeling as indispensable in a contemporary art book, but
>>>> you
>>>> can have a narrative - something which is closer to prose than to
>>>> poetry,
>>>> and that
>>>> tells some story - with that characteristic - , but just a too coherent
>>>> and
>>>> too big
>>>> narrative book.
>>>> x-ana
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alison Croggon" <
>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>> >
>>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 6:26 PM
>>>>
>>>> Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Ana - I don't know about claims about what seems contemporary or
>>>> modern, or that prose narrative isn't capable of contemporary
>>>> purchase. I think story matters just as much now as it ever has. I've
>>>> read some astounding novels in the past few months, from the lyric
>>>> exploration of silence and selfhood in Michele Desbordes (who is
>>>> extraordinary in my book, and whose books only came out in the past 10
>>>> years, although to my sadness she died not so long ago) to the
>>>> astounding mid-20th century polyvoice epic of Victor Serge to the
>>>> wickedly funny and black fables of Arto Paaslini. Robert Pinget, WG
>>>> Sebald, Thomas Mann (Dr Faustus), Christa Wolf. These are just names
>>>> plucked out of a hat, but none of them work in the way you (or Nerval,
>>>> who write some mean prose himself) describe.
>>>>
>>>> I do agree however that poetry is a lot like dance. At least, whenever
>>>> I write about dance, I always end up talking about poetry. I tried to
>>>> explore this in a piece on a work by choreographer Lucy Guerin, who
>>>> lately has been working quite a bit with language -
>>>> http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2008/10/miaf-corridor.html - which
>>>> I'll take the liberty of quoting below, only because it's pertinent to
>>>> this discussion:
>>>>
>>>> Like novels or short stories, theatre finds its poetic through
>>>> narrative. The narrative might be displaced or distorted or multiple,
>>>> or it might be absolutely linear; but however it appears, narrative is
>>>> a tendency that the form must wrestle with, either to reject or to
>>>> accept, to reveal or to distort. Poetry, on the other hand, need not
>>>> deal with narrative at all: a poem might be an epic story like
>>>> Paradise Lost, or it might be a vivid glimpse of a moment, as in Ezra
>>>> Pound's In a Station of the Metro. It's up to the poet, a decision
>>>> that can be freely asserted because of the nature of poetry itself.
>>>>
>>>> What is primary in both poetry and dance is its materiality. Just as
>>>> poetry foregrounds the sensuous and rhythmic qualities of language, so
>>>> dance celebrates the sensuous and rhythmic qualities of gesture.
>>>> Neither needs to be more than the dynamic and immediate movement of
>>>> exchange between reader and page, singer and listener, audience and
>>>> performer, and for each this contract is more easily grasped than in
>>>> theatre or in novels, where the tending towards narrative and
>>>> explication must be resisted with active violence.
>>>>
>>>> xA
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2003 at 7:02 PM, Ana Olinto<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> i think the last posts by dominic, frederick and alison touch the heart
>>>>
>>>>> of
>>>>> my question. i think valéry was right when
>>>>> he saw something new and irreversible in nerval, poe and then
>>>>> baudelaire.
>>>>> he defined prose as closer to walking, in which all our movements are a
>>>>> consequence of aiming at some spot,
>>>>> and poetry as closer to dance, in which all our movements are an end in
>>>>> itself.
>>>>> sappho's "more than a hero" is narrative, linear, but doensn't feel
>>>>> like
>>>>> having, in its movements, an aim in mind -
>>>>> or at least not in an emphatic way .
>>>>> now, the difference between sappho and modern poetry is only one of
>>>>> degree.
>>>>> modern poets just intensified the
>>>>> feeling of not aiming at anything.
>>>>> this dancing, no-aim feeling can be seen as typical not so much of
>>>>> poetry
>>>>> as
>>>>> opposed to prose as of modern,
>>>>> radically non-linear, as opposed to orthodox sensitivity.
>>>>> that's why i do tend to see the novel form and even more the epic form
>>>>> as
>>>>> not sufficiently contemporary - just as
>>>>> the sonnet form, and, in music, the sonata form - the musical feeling
>>>>> of
>>>>> aim
>>>>> - or what francis bacon called what can
>>>>> be seen, in painting, as a picture which "tells a story".
>>>>> it is not necessarily much attention to sounds or even to the whole
>>>>> texture
>>>>> of words - not necessarily hermeticism
>>>>> or even much complexity which makes a text feel contemporary (it's not
>>>>> a
>>>>> question of a poetry versus prose
>>>>> dichotomy). to my mind, it's the no-aim feeling.
>>>>> chekhov said he usually composed a tale, and then threw away the
>>>>> beginning
>>>>> and the end: that has to do with what
>>>>> i'm calling no-aim. what makes chekhov so modern and almost
>>>>> contemporary
>>>>> is
>>>>> the no-aim feeling he gives us,
>>>>> even writting in prose, and a very linear one - it is in its totality -
>>>>> and
>>>>> not just the totality of the tale, but also each of the
>>>>> totalities which constitute each of its paragraphs - that it ceases to
>>>>> be
>>>>> linear.
>>>>> a good chekhov tale is not very different, structurally, from the best
>>>>> longer narrative poems by elizabeth bishop - a
>>>>> chekhov fan herself - but of course there is a lot of difference in
>>>>> style
>>>>> -
>>>>> and of course she intensified a lot the thing,
>>>>> and cared a lot more about resourses more typical to poetry - thanks to
>>>>> nerval, poe, baudelaire and their followers.
>>>>> it's not so much a question of superficially "modern" resources, such
>>>>> as
>>>>> playing with time structures or making
>>>>> your narrative more fragmentary and saturated with "poetic", as opposed
>>>>> to
>>>>> prosy, components: you can have all
>>>>> flashbacks, word-games and local non-linearity and still direct us to a
>>>>> closed aim.
>>>>> i agree that "it is hard today for an intellectual to be clear what his
>>>>> tribe values, goals, heroes and enemies are, or
>>>>> about what one's 'tribe' is" and that the sustained "relentless
>>>>> cumulative
>>>>> power" of traditional epics - and novels -
>>>>> were possible thanks to that power, now dead.
>>>>> this doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't have any philosophical
>>>>> grounding
>>>>> today. on the contrary, i see as most negative
>>>>> precisely the fact that any groundings are lacking in today's world,
>>>>> and
>>>>> defining frontiers in art procedures - and here i
>>>>> suspect frederik will agree with me - is a sign of some grounding.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alison Croggon" <
>>>>> [log in to unmask]>
>>>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 7:16 PM
>>>>> Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I was thinking of gypsy tales, Eulenspiegel, Gilgamesh, folk tales...
>>>>> (I'll pass over the "oral traditions are not literature" question,
>>>>> which is very wobbly - there's lots to learn about story telling from
>>>>> oral tales).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd say the primary shape of epic is circularity. And Sappho's "How
>>>>> like a god he seems to me" is a narrative as much as Homer is.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can't see that that the structural demands of story in prose and
>>>>> poetry are very different. You have to tell a story in a way that
>>>>> commands attention. I ended up thinking that was a primarily question
>>>>> of rhythmic control, in the sense of large movements and at the level
>>>>> of the sentence/line.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've never got linearity as applied to story, unless it means one
>>>>> thing after another moving forward in literal time, as Hal suggests;
>>>>> in which case lyric is definitely linear too. Every story goes
>>>>> backwards and forwards, because it reflects how memory works - I can't
>>>>> think of a single epic poem without divagations and distortions of
>>>>> imagined time - the lnvocation of the muses in the present that begins
>>>>> the Iliad or the stories of the gods, the bizarre leaps back and forth
>>>>> in Beowulf, Aeneas's visits to the dead, Milton's sudden moving
>>>>> description of his blindness in Paradise Lost, etc etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> xA
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> "simplest kinds of story telling (oral tales, say) are often far too
>>>>>> fragmentary" - depends, I suppose, what you're thinking of. Marko the
>>>>>> Prince and other oral epics of Serbia - very straightforward and
>>>>>> Homeric.
>>>>>> Likewise Gilgamesh, probably based on oral tales. And then the crucial
>>>>>> term
>>>>>> is "based on." I was talking about literature, not oral traditions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Vergil: Augustus and Rome. Tasso: aristocratic Catholic Europe.
>>>>>> Camoes:
>>>>>> imperial Portugal and expansionist Europe. Milton: the radical
>>>>>> Reformation.
>>>>>> Nazim Hikmet: the international proletariat. Tribes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The inherent requirements of narrative poetry are very different from
>>>>>> those
>>>>>> of the novel. "[Moving] forward and backward in space and time in ways
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> are not straightforward at all" gets in the way. Linearity (I'll drop
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> quotes), coherence, relentless cumulative power, are needed. Their
>>>>>> absence
>>>>>> - a refusal to differentiate between narrative and lyric - makes
>>>>>> Walcott's
>>>>>> Omeros unreadable. Their presence makes Glyn Maxwell's Time's Fool
>>>>>> lastingly enjoyable and useful, despite the relative triviality of its
>>>>>> theme.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>>>>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>>>>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>>>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>>>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>>
>>
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