One assumes the folk on this list have read all the CAS tales and all the HPL tales so now everyone should go out and read Olaf Stapledon's STAR MAKER and then we can talk about cosmic viewpoints.

JBP

I am afraid I am still struggling with LAST AND FIRST MEN. I aim to finish it in my lifetime.

I am in the same fix as JoJo Lapin X, although I did recently re-read, and very much enjoyed, Stapledon's "Nietzschean" novels, Odd John and Sirius.

Some suggestions for readings from other authors who display cosmic perspectives, to one degree or the other:

--Marcus Aurelius

--John Milton (Satan's voyage through outer space in Book IX of Paradise Lost)

--Edward Young (Night Thoughts; "Night the Ninth")

--William Blake (in the "epics")

--George Sterling

--William Hope Hodgson

--Stanislaw Lem.

An excellent overview of the cosmic perspective in general appears in this article in Scientific American by Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium. Some highlights:

Quote:

[H]owever big the world is—in our hearts, our minds, and our outsize atlases—the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: a broken toy, a scraped knee, a schoolyard bully. Adults know that kids have no clue what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective.

As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Apparently not. And the evidence abounds. Part the curtains of society's racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers.

Here are the eyes of a person who has not only written about, but actually looked into the Abyss. He wears the mark.

[www.fantasticfiction.co.uk]

[media.collegepublisher.com]

Is the enjoyment of sunsets banal? I love sunsets. Not necessarily the setting of the sun itself, but more the light it casts towards the east, and I like to hunt through landscapes and woods to where the warm light falls in patches on rocks and moss, and boles, making everything rich and saturated in color.

But while growing up I have been fed by so much ridicule about sunsets, that it's cheap and insipid in art, that I become so self-conscious and guilt-ridden about it, almost ashamed, that I can't fully loose myself in the experience. "No great artist paints sunsets". "Good aesthetic taste is more sophisticated, subtle, and complex. It explores more dynamic, interesting, and deeper subjects". And I admit that I am myself disgusted by the conventions of sunsets, especially around couples dutifully sitting down to see the sundisc disappear, and then rising to leave, nurturing their naive illusions about twosome-ness and soulmate-ness.

Naturally, I also enjoy sophisticated aesthetics, as in literature and art, and subtle forms and contrasts in Nature that usually go by unnoticed by most people. But somehow the light of sunsets lies at the core of it all, it triggers the motivation for everything else. While I admit that going for a noon walk with the sun looking through the clouds, cheers me up and saves me from insanity, from an aesthetic view I don't enjoy the daylight at all. I find it ugly and harsh, and would rather draw down the curtains and light a candle. Unfortunately the special light of the sunset only lasts for a few minutes. Capturing those moments is a race against time.
But if sunsets are trite, aren't most things we enjoy really? Even the cosmic viewpoint. For even the best among us, like Lovecraft, didn't really experience the cosmic perspective, aside from a vague notion about it, around which he constructed intellectual conceptual thought patterns, without real relation to actual cosmic perspectives. Experiences are limited to the nerves inside of our skulls.

Can someone help me with this conflict and guilt about sunsets? Should a mature mind be more sophisticated in taste?

Quote:

For even the best among us, like Lovecraft, didn't really experience the cosmic perspective, aside from a vague notion about it, around which he constructed intellectual conceptual thought patterns, without real relation to actual cosmic perspectives.

I cannot agree, as this is not something that we can possibly know (another's experience). If Lovecraft claims to have experienced the cosmic feeling very strongly (and he does), then I, for one, am not going to contradict him.

As for the rest of us, perhaps our failure to achieve a cosmic perspective more consistently is the result of social conditioning, automated behavior, and lack of will--all of which can be ameliorated, if not completely eliminated. At the end of the day (so to speak), triteness, or the lack of it, lies in the way in which we experience things, and not in what we experience.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 9 Mar 09 | 05:42PM by Kyberean.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For even the best among us, like Lovecraft, didn't
> really experience the cosmic perspective, aside
> from a vague notion about it, around which he
> constructed intellectual conceptual thought
> patterns, without real relation to actual cosmic
> perspectives.
>
> I cannot agree, as this is not something that we
> can possibly know (another's experience). If
> Lovecraft claims to have experienced the cosmic
> feeling very strongly (and he does), then I, for
> one, am not going to contradict him.

I presented this merely as an idea, a little to provoke, and I am not completely convinced of my own statement. I think it also depends on how we define cosmic perpective. I believe Lovecraft had a great intellectual experience, enhanced from his astronomical studies among other things. But if we by cosmic perspective mean actually realizing and sensing perspectives far removed from life on Earth, then I believe we also have to take in a spirtual dimension of the mind as a factor for realizing such, at this stage in humanity's limited exploration of, and physical reach out into, the cosmos.



> At the
> end of the day (so to speak), triteness, or the
> lack of it, lies in the way in which we experience
> things, and not in what we experience.

I liked this. Encouraging. Helps my conflicting relation to sunsets. Thank you!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 9 Mar 09 | 06:26PM by Knygatin.

I well understand provocation, lol, so no worries, there. I certainly did not mean that one ought not to question such things.

I see what you mean, with regard to Lovecraft, but he makes very clear in his letters that his attraction to the cosmic perspective is predominantly emotional. See, for instance, the following excerpt from a letter of his:

Quote:

As for me, I think I have the actual cosmic feeling very strongly. In fact I know that my most poignant emotional experiences are those which concern the lure of unplumbed space, the terror of the encroaching outer void, & the struggle of the ego to transcend the known & established order of time, (time, indeed, above all else, & nearly always in a backward direction) space, matter, force, geometry, & natural law in general".
--H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Clark Ashton Smith, October 17, 1930

To me, this emotional as well as intellectual attraction to cosmicism is as revealing a marker as any of a "spiritual" perspective, regardless of Lovecraft's consciously avowed mechanistic materialist philosophy. Indeed, like Nietzsche, Lovecraft seems to me to be very spiritual, even if despite himself, in ways that matter to me, at least, and much more so than the majority who take that title openly.

I do not know if I can fulfill your problem with sunsets, probably not - however, for me, and in two places in particular -- one a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and two, the vast reaches of West Texas, particularly on the edge of the Pecos canyon -
When extremely clear, as one stands watching the sun go down, at the last moment (due no doubt to the refraction angle), the sun appears to speed up, and I have often had the sensation of moving backwards - which is in fact what I am doing in relation to the stationary sun. It is quite thrilling - Once near Sutro's (now gone) at the Cliff House restaurant, with a particularly lovely creature (also lyric soprano) along, we watched the horizon of storms and heavy clouds, and were humming the love duet from La Boheme, when, at the moment of the dual High C - the clouds on the horizon lifted for just a moment as the sun visibly sank - it was overwhelming, and a prelude to a remarkable evening of youthful enlightenment.

calonlan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I do not know if I can fulfill your problem with
> sunsets, probably not -

I think I see how you mean, mirroring my comment about romance sunset, including disappearing sundisc and all. That's alright, I don't mind it per se. As Kyberean put it, triteness, or the lack of it, lies in the way in which we experience things, and not in what we experience.

I like the sensation you describe about falling backwards, and here enters a little cosmic element too. I had some similar sensation, although it was not at a sunset, standing atop a mountain hill, looking out over the ocean; I was simply in the middle of space, and right underneath my feet was the enormous Sphere, below me, with its geological and seething biological surface details, hanging in space, and pulling my otherwise lost mental senses down in its one direction of balance. Far off was the Sun similarly hanging. Seeing the horizon all around of course helped this sensation.

When looking at sunsets I can recommend trying a pair of binoculars. Not too much magnification, perhaps 8x. (Otherwise it will just focus on a small isolated spot. You will still want the sensation of a wide horizon view.) The most intense sunset colors are most often down close to the horizon, and the binoculars will present the sunset in a way that it can't be seen anywhere in the World, and will magnify it halfway up the sky. Colors will be even more intensified, and the cloud formations monstrous. At the same time the foreground will remain undistorted, and natural looking. (Because of an optical illusion, in which the sunset and foreground are too far apart to be related in visual perspective). It is very bizarre.
But never ever look straight into the Sun with binoculars, or you can go blind! Always keep it at the side, or wait till it is below the horizon.

But for me, the real creme de la creme, is turning around 180 degrees away from the sun, my back towards it (the rebel in me I guess) and rushing off into the wood, to where the red sunlight shines on objects. The light we receive from the setting Sun is a secondary "borrowed light". For the Sun is now elsewhere, in lands over the edge of the World, in places we have no contact with, and can't visualize, other than in our imagination. So the light we receive from those distant locales, is really fairy light. Bringing with it hints of hidden and intricate vibrations. A patch of sunlight on a tree is so intense as to seem tangible, almost like an etheral substance plastered onto the bark. Just looking at it sets off the imagination. And the sunset rays have a way of intensifying all different colors; the shadows appear a deep purple or rich violet. And the clover on the ground looks like someone has generously sprinkled out emeralds from his pouch.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 14 Mar 09 | 06:22PM by Knygatin.

In terms of descriptive prose, reflecting on your observations of reflected light - read "watership down" and notice particularly the section on the grass in moonlight - absolutely superb -
the book is a retelling of Homer - rabbit style.

calonlan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In terms of descriptive prose, reflecting on your
> observations of reflected light - read "watership
> down" and notice particularly the section on the
> grass in moonlight - absolutely superb -
> the book is a retelling of Homer - rabbit style.

It is somewhere on the bookshelves of my parents'. I have been told many times to read it. I wasn't enough enticed to it, because it seemed too normal and widely accepted. As a kid I did read The Book of the Dun Cow instead, because it had a monster in it, but that is so long ago that I don't remember much of it. I am sure Watership Down has fine prose and insightful philosophy on human relations, but the fable format with straight allegorical use of animals just doesn't attract me (although I enjoy Rackham's illustrations for Aisopos). I prefer more bizarre, richly decadent fantasy.

I'm not suggesting it as "a matter of preference" - but as an extraordinary example of really fine writing in the location I mentioned - it is far into the book where the rabbits have found the down - It is structurally, a masterpiece. Fine writing is its own justification for those who would write - If I only read the Wall Street Journal and National Review I would have no idea what my enemies are up to! - And the treatment of Death (the Black Rabbit) is "monster enow".

calonlan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm not suggesting it as "a matter of preference"
> - but as an extraordinary example of really fine
> writing in the location I mentioned - it is far
> into the book where the rabbits have found the
> down - It is structurally, a masterpiece. Fine
> writing is its own justification for those who
> would write - If I only read the Wall Street
> Journal and National Review I would have no idea
> what my enemies are up to! - And the treatment of
> Death (the Black Rabbit) is "monster enow".


I may come around to it. But I have a pile of unread classic masters before me, that I have dedicated myself to eventually read. Right now I am into Wordsworth (he is very wise in his basic Nature foundations, and uplifting for the soul!). I do read things outside my preference, and take them as vitamin pills. I am not a would be writer (the urge in that direction was not strong enough to dedicate me a hundred percent), and select reading matter purely from substance rather than writing style (although I enjoy the aesthetics and balance of good structure). I also strongly believe that style is nothing worthwhile in itself to strive for. Even though a result of training, good meaningful style is only a nonconcious reflection of the wise person's accumulated knowledge and composite outlook on life. Therefore it is useles and asinine to try to emulate another writer's style.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 16 Mar 09 | 01:20AM by Knygatin.