I would have to disagree a little with your last observation. The actual history of the works of the great authors reveals just the opposite - most writers begin by emulating some writer or master they admire - often as a way to force themselves to dare to put pen to paper - but this only releases their own inner "daemon" and begins the process that results in even a Spenser and a Milton.
Read Clark's early work in "Sword of Zagan" - For fun, take a look at Byron's "Thoughts on a College Examination".

calonlan Wrote:
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> I would have to disagree a little with your last
> observation. The actual history of the works of
> the great authors reveals just the opposite - most
> writers begin by emulating some writer or master
> they admire - often as a way to force themselves
> to dare to put pen to paper - but this only
> releases their own inner "daemon" and begins the
> process that results in even a Spenser and a
> Milton.
> Read Clark's early work in "Sword of Zagan" - For
> fun, take a look at Byron's "Thoughts on a College
> Examination".



Well.... the creative process is a rather complex matter. With several truths, being parallel, depending on what perspective one chooses to view from. It's a thing maturing over time, with many different factors and circumstances falling in from different directions in the whole living process, all the pieces eventually fitting together and merging into a whole within the mature artist.

I agree with what you say. No artist can remain unaffected by other artists, and be an isolated island. Just as ones voice will always carry traces of ones parents'. And the evolving artist studies and admires the work of mature artists. It's part of the early stages. So my comment in previous post above was unclear, I was thinking of the artist who supposedly has progressed into some stage of independence. A writer who remains in slavelike worship, continuing to emulate, will be no more than a parrot. To become a mature artist in his own right, he/she must look elsewhere, at Life. An artist who has matured and come around to his own personal style, does not conciously strive for the style, but strives to express TRUTH. And when he succeeds in capturing some kind of (inner) truth, the selected words and the order they fall in, will form a natural flowing style reflecting this truth, the individual voice being a melded totality of the writer's accumulated learning process history. That is what real art is all about, expressing some kind of truth. If the style becomes an end in itself, a self-conscious studious surface effort, then he will certainly deteriorate as artist.

I don't know why I analyze over formal things like this. It's pretty useless on this forum, like "breaking in open doors", when most already take these things for granted. I guess I do it compulsory, to get some sense of inner balance and order, in a World of humans in which I only see chaos and confusion. I could probably use my energies for better and more creatively fun things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Mar 09 | 02:59AM by Knygatin.

Don't underestimate chaos. Without it, there could be no creativity, in my estimation. As Nietzsche observed, "one must have chaos within one to give birth to a dancing star"--an appropriately cosmic observation, as well, in keeping with the thread!

Kyberean Wrote:
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> Don't underestimate chaos. Without it, there could
> be no creativity, in my estimation. As Nietzsche
> observed, "one must have chaos within one to give
> birth to a dancing star"--an appropriately cosmic
> observation, as well, in keeping with the thread!

That makes sense, since the ordered parts of a created thing rest, the energies have been crystalized. Chaos seeks balance.

This makes one think of the formulary hacks who grind out endless volumes as variation by character names and locales and eras, but always the same tired tale - yet make buckets of money - the inversion within society -
"When young and would have really relished a Ferrari, I couldn' afford one; now that I can, I don't give a damn."
Calonlan

Marcus Aurelius's Stoic predecessor Seneca was more succinct regarding the cosmic perspective, but no less eloquent:

"Infinitely swift is the flight of time … Everything slips into the same abyss … The time which we spend in living is but a point, even less than a point".

"Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of time’s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity".

"As the mind wanders among the very stars it delights in laughing at the mosaic floors of the rich and at the whole earth with all its gold".

Also, this excerpt from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, though still a bit sentimental in parts for my taste, nicely hammers home the point.

(Forgive me for subjecting you to the music!)

Here is a poem by William Wordsworth. He has no fantastic or weird elements, but there is a basic cosmic viewpoint in the way he connects the small with the big.


"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth


For me Wordsworth is the founding poet for appreciation of Nature, laying the groundwork for later poets that explored more symbolic, romantic, and spiritual elements, like Keats and Shelley, and the succeeding Pantheistic and Weird writers.

In a harsh materialistic World that has lost essential contact with Nature, and disharmony and petty rules, Wordsworth can lead you back to the simple joyful foundations.

"The Daffodils" anthropomorphizes far too much for me to think of it as cosmic. Much more so are some of the passages from The Prelude:


I: 391-400

[F]or many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.


II: 302-322

[F]or I would walk alone,
Under the quiet stars, and at that time
Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound
To breathe an elevated mood, by form
Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,
If the night blackened with a coming storm,
Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
Or make their dim abode in distant winds.

Thence did I drink the visionary power;
And deem not profitless those fleeting moods
Of shadowy exultation: not for this,
That they are kindred to our purer mind
And intellectual life; but that the soul,
Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity, whereto
With growing faculties she doth aspire,
With faculties still growing, feeling still

That whatsoever point they gain, they yet
Have something to pursue.

Those are nice passages, describing the inner senses of a person striving to reach out for the cosmic.



Absquatch Wrote:
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> "The Daffodils" anthropomorphizes far too much for
> me to think of it as cosmic.

I was rather alluding to the passage that compares the growth of the daffodils to the streams of stars.
Clusters of flowers and star clusters follow the same geometric laws. Observing such associations, is one way of reaching out toward the cosmic.

Quote:

I was rather alluding to the passage that compares the growth of the daffodils to the streams of stars.

Yes, I see what you mean. I was focusing more upon the anthropomorphic, which is a predominant motif of the poem, but your observation is certainly valid. The passage that you refer to is an interesting one.

What's also interesting is the poet's self-comparison to a cloud (cf. Shelley's cloud that "brings fresh showers for the thirsting flowers"). The comparison subtly suggests that, just as the daffodils derive material sustenance from the cloud's rainfall, they derive a "spiritual", or "higher", existence from their transmutation via the poet's imagination.

Ahh, Autumn, favorite season! As right at this time! Indian summer, with glorious sunny days!

The first step towards cosmic awareness I think, and the single best remedy for any kind of depressive mood, is to leave ones books and the four walls of home, and go out into Nature and study real Life.

Had a wonderful stroll yesterday afternoon. Went into the woods, with a basket for the possibility of finding chanterells. Got lost, and couldn't find the way to my favorite mushroom picking place, so there were no mushrooms this time around. This afternoon was set for visuals, rather than utility. The pine stems were covered with bluish lichen, fluorescent in the shade. There was a brook with strangely red water trickling, and I imagined it being wine (completely out of place in this northern climate), (or perhaps, possibly blood, but I wasn't in the horror mood).
Out on the halcyon fields, where sheep graced in pastoral idyll, mists were rising from yesterday's rains, causing the setting sun to beam forth shafts of light from behind the hillocks, while gossamer drifted on the air and insects danced.

There was only one "snake" in my afternoon paradise. In the wood I was attacked by nasty brownish flies with rudimentary wings, that jumped at me from the branches, trying to suck my blood. Unlike ordinary flies, they are flat-bodied, and difficult to scrape off once they land on your skin. They are as subtle as a birth mole to the touch of your fingers. And they don't die when you smack or flick them. They just make a sharp turn in the air and are right back at you. It seems they aim for shadowy spots, often hiding behind the ears. One even flew straight into my nose. Then I started running in panic. And I regret not bringing a comb, because they were all over my hair, crawling down to the scalp. Disgusting creatures!
I guess cosmic awareness would mean not getting upset by such small local details of mundane discomfort, and just let them crawl all over you. ;) Or at least, remove them in a matter of fact way, without emotional turmoil. ;)

I did end my stroll with a degree of utility. For out by the sea, in the last remaing radiance of light, I plucked blue sea mussels, which I took home and cooked a dinner from.

My perspective is different, I suppose, as I do not see the cosmic as being tied so closely to nature mysticism. Steve Behrends offers some useful reminders on the subject. According to Behrends, cosmic perspectives are

Quote:

[A]ssociated with concepts vast and vastly mysterious, and with the use of startling, unearthly imagery; they partake of a distant perspective, and above all are pervaded with an indifference toward human affairs, thus provoking a sense of our littleness and transience. [...] [A] cosmic work need not be vast in scale, but can instead be vast in Its implications, by invoking gulfs lying unsuspected beyond daily life.

Nature mysticism and cosmicism both de-center the human, but cosmicism does so on a much vaster and more unearthly scale.

Yea, agreed.

A gradual de-centering. You step out into Nature, among its mystical elements and energies, and you're enveloped by it, you disperse, become part of your surrounding, your ego partly dissolves. You look up, up at the stars, and the de-centering expands further, toward the cosmic, and Earth itself takes on the role and enclosed identity your body had before while walking in the wood. And likewise, again, you dissolve from that larger degree identity, and now you're spirit, a Star-Treader.

Well said! Nature is a starting-point for perceptions of the cosmic and the unbounded, something that the poets and theorists of the Sublime during the 18th and 19th Centuries understood well.