Re: The Super thread of literature, art, music, life, and the universe in general
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 23 January, 2021 01:20PM
Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> What you're saying about French and Irish
> contemporary fiction sounds plausible to me, but
> my opinion would be worth almost nothing.
Well, we differ, but so what? :^)
>
> You said, Sawfish, "For the beauty debate, I could
> *feel* that your direction and ultimate intent, as
> far as I got it, had validity, but I become
> obsessed with characterizing things in detail (a
> foul materialist, you see), at their constituent
> parts" -- I read that and wondered if scrutiny for
> "constituent parts" is something that doesn't work
> with the beautiful. Putting it oversimply, is the
> beautiful something that must be contemplated as a
> whole -- however imperfect and partial our
> awareness of it -- before we focus on parts? If I
> examine the parts first, will I ever attain to an
> apprehension of the beautiful? Now I think, given
> the imperfection of one's attention, sensibility,
> etc. that one will often begin with a partial and
> imperfect awareness of the whole, but that's not
> the same thing as trying to build up logically
> from parts to whole.
Nope, that's backwards from how I'd do it.
I would perceive something as beautiful, then address the attributes that *might* account for why I found it beautiful.
Without something like that, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to discuss objects of beauty unless all parties discussing a "beautiful" object had seen it or otherwise directly experienced it.
Otherwise, if party A says a certain Titian painting is beautiful, but party B has never seen it, to accept it as beautiful, or even that it *might* be beautiful, requires a gigantic leap of faith by party B in favor of party A.
Many, myself included, are not prepared to take that leap.
>
> That, by the way, might relate to my conviction
> that, often, a literary work must be reread before
> one can say one has rightly read it. Conversely,
> there are works of literary craft that can be fun
> to read but that have little to offer in a second
> reading unless enough time has passed that one has
> forgotten a lot.
Agreed.
There are many works I've read in excess of 10 times. The Tin Drum probably 3 times; Journey to the End of the Night 3 times; Catch-22 possibly 15 times. Some earlier Vonnegut; much of Hemingway multiple times, except for when he slid over to being too maudlin.
Etc.
> I'd cite Stephen King's 11/22/63
> as an example of this. I like that book, for the
> most part, but when I read it the second time
> (after a lapse of several years), I didn't have
> the sense that there was much there that I hadn't
> got the first time. The things I liked the first
> time, I still liked, and things I didn't, ditto.
> But the first time I read the Dostoevsky novels
> that I mentioned earlier today, they were less
> engaging than on subsequent readings.
Good point.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 23 Jan 21 | 01:30PM by Sawfish.