this broadens the interpretation of occult to 'other' as opposed to
'astrological' or 'mystical' which is the interpretation I've taken
previously - if its of interest.
Tilla
On 11 Apr 2012, at 10:38, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> i think the great value of the occult in the arts--thinking of austin
>> spare and yeats, is that they allow for a new capacity for invention,
>> or
>> as the voices told the aging yeats "we are here to give you new
>> metaphors".
>
>> even if you don't literally "believe" in the system you can still use
>> it as a unifying narrative against which one works.
>
>> blake is the great example of this.
>
> I'd say that's the same with many poets' poetics. I.e. the chosen
> theory enables the poet to focus on producing their own kind of poetry
> even when it has little or no propositional value.
>
> Any piece of intellectual dust can seed a perfect raindrop.
>
> But if this could be so of any belief, the existence of the art cannot
> itself be used to claim value for the beliefs, can it? Or does the
> artistic fertility of a belief system reflexively say something good
> about it? Is the occult a miserable mania of troubled people,
> crippling in its effects, or a crucial piercing insight beyond the
> mind-forg'd manacles of quotidian capitalism? I seem to think that
> it's both.
>
>
>> i would argue that emily bronte's continuation of the collective
> childhood myth of angria, glasstown &c. is just such another.
>
> Are you talking about the Gondal poems - referring to a continuation
> with the ultimate sources in play with tin soldiers - , or are you
> saying e.g. that Wuthering Heights in some sense keeps faith with the
> imaginative world of Gondal etc - in contrast to eg charlotte's
> explicit statements about saying goodbye to one aesthetic and working
> with another (intro to The Professor, Farewell to Angria, etc). I'm
> fascinated by this storm of adolescent creation.
>
> Not sure why you pick this out as an example of a quasi-belief-system.
> Why isn't it just fiction? Is it because there's an intensity to
> youthful make-believe that would distinguish it, as a system, from
> e.g. Trollope's Barsetshire, Zola's Rougon-Macquart?
>
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Tilla Brading
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