For those one or two of you who regularly read my blog you will know that I have been speaking lately about the role of art in politics, with a particular emphasis on the Romantic authors in the revolutionary period. The French historian Jules Michelet wrote that “every age dreams its successor.” I am convinced that art in all its guises is a central part in this dreaming. Utopianism is an essential element in all social and political change and art is an essential part of Utopianism.
Ernst Bloch was a German philosopher who made utopianism a central part of his writing and thought. He went to great lengths to connect art with the utopian function of human consciousness, particularly in his book The Utopian Function of Art and Literature. I quote a relevant passage from the book which speaks, I think, to the issues which I have recently discussing.
“….the question about the truth of art becomes philosophically the questions concerning the given reproductive potentiality of the beautiful illusion, concerning its degree of reality in a reality of the world that is not one-dimensional, concerning the place of its object correlate. Utopia as the determination of the object, with the degree of being (Seinsgrad) of the really possible (Realmöglichen) presents a particularly rich problem for corroboration in the light of the iridescent phenomenon of art. And the answer to the aesthetic question about truth is that artistic illusion is generally not only mere illusion but one wrapped in images, a meaning that only portrays in images what can be carried on, where the exaggeration and telling of stories (Ausfabelung) represent an anticipatory illumination of reality circulating and signifying in the active present (Bewegt-Vorhandenen), in an anticipatory illumination, which portrays things in a specifically aesthetic immanent way. Here, individual, social, and also elemental events are illuminated that the usual or sharp senses can barely detect yet It is due to the fact that the anticipatory illumination is attainable in this way, that art propels its subjects, figures, situations, actions, landscapes to the end, that it expresses these things in sorrow, in fortune as well as in meaning. Anticipatory illumination itself is attainable by virtue of the fact that the craft (Metier) of propelling something to the end takes place in a dialectically open space, where all objects can be aesthetically portrayed."
The concept of ‘anticipatory illumination’ is particularly exciting because it puts into words what is a very complex notion. Art creates a picture of a future that is nascent in the human soul.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Our Amusing Selves...
In Book Two of The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes –
At times we need to have a rest from ourselves by looking at and down at ourselves and, from an artistic distance, laughing at ourselves or crying at ourselves, we have to discover the hero no less thn the fool in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be pleased about our folly in order to be able to stay pleased about our wisdom! And precisely because we are at bottom grave and serious human beings and more weights than human beings, nothing does us as much good as the fool’s cap: we need it against ourselves – we need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose that freedom over things that our ideal demands of us.
I very useful insight in this, an age of cynicism, wouldn’t you say?
Friday, March 20, 2009
Reply to C.
Oh, come on C. If you don't think it is morbid then you just aren't paying enough attention. And as for Q, it is not awkwardly Hip, Gomeshi just thinks he is hip when he isn't. The entire paradigm of art and philosophy has shifted and Gomeshi and his cohorts are stuck in the past. Canada reads for example is like people getting together 50 years after Gutenberg started the printing-press revolution and talking about what were the year's best illuminated manuscripts. There has been a fundamental paradigm change in western civilization which started sometime around the beginning of the Victorian Era and its implications are just now becoming clear. The entire notion of art in all its forms grew into crisis because of the decline in religion was not met with any equivalent project which could define the purpose of aesthetic expression. The Romantics seemed to point to a way out but with the industrial revolution this got lost. Some Victorian authors used social activism in art as a kind of guiding light but this could not sustain the aesthetic project for very long because Capitalism effectively turns everything into a spectacle. Anyway, we are now on ground which is shifting so fast and unevenly that it many people are holding on to aesthetic paradigms which were vital a hundred years ago, as though to be comforted in their traditions. But these will not protect them and Q will only be a comfort for so long.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Poetry, Art, and Experts
We live in a technocratic age of specialization where the voice of experts carries a kind of sacred currency, so we are hesitant to take seriously the ideas of anyone who we do not perceive to be a specialist of some kind. And while this elitism has been particularly marked in the areas of science and economics, technocracy has also gradually colonized the humanities so that fewer and fewer non-academics have been prepared to venture into regions of intellectual endeavor such as literary theory. This exclusivity has been magnified by the increasing influence of linguistics in all areas of the humanities. In recent years many studies in the humanities have imported concepts and terminology from linguistics that are pseudo-scientific and nearly impossible for the uninitiated to understand. One can quite easily find essays on, say, William Blake that are so turgid and complex that even a graduate degree in the subject is no guarantee of understanding let alone appreciation. In the end I believe that one’s experience of a poet such as Blake will not be enhanced, and may even be hindered, by such complex ideas as ‘performative language’ or ‘speech-act theory.’ But within a culture where such specialists’ ideas are fast becoming the prevailing wisdom, how is a non-specialist to justify swimming in the depths of poetic waters?
Michael Schmidt is a non-academic who discussed this problem in the opening pages of his book, Lives of the Poets. In an imagined conversation, Schmidt hears the words of his practically minded father telling him that the experts will 'have his guts for garters," and asking him what hope he has of "escaping unscathed." The answer to such a question is, of course, that Schmidt had no hope of escaping anything. In fact, any non-expert who steps into this kind of arena expects the slings and arrows of professional criticism to rain down upon him.
But why should a growing technocracy and the threat of professional ridicule stop anyone who is determined to speak his or her mind on a matter of importance? And if someone does decide to undertake such a journey, I am not certain that they should feel compelled to justify themselves to the barking dogs of specialization or any of the members of the public who happen to support them. After all, the most important thing to remember is that art and poetry belong equally to all of us. And, far from having a monopoly on knowledge, I believe that academics develop such specialized viewpoints concerning all of the arts that they often lack the passionate engagement necessary for true aesthetic insight. For example, while every professor of Art History may teach her students of Van Gogh and his place in post-impressionism, few seem concerned with his plea to human compassion. And most professors, stable members of the bourgeoisie that they are, would be unable to see a man such as Van Gogh, if they actually met him, as anything more than a drunkard and a madman.
But if, after having considered all of this, there are still readers who question the wisdom of such an undertaking, I point them to the great essayist Michel de Montaigne. While Montaigne’s only professional accreditation was a law degree, he single-handedly invented a literary genre and the dozens of essays that he wrote are full of insights that span the spectrum of human endeavor. Montaigne, one of history’s great skeptics, made no pretence of specialized knowledge and readily offered himself up to ridicule in the hope that while studying himself and his own opinions, he was really studying humankind.
“I have no doubt,” Montaigne once wrote, “that I often happen to speak of things that are better treated by masters of the craft... and whoever shall catch me in ignorance will do nothing against me.” I deeply sympathize with such a sentiment because I believe that passion for a subject such as poetry is, in the final analysis, more important than learning and offers the opportunity for knowledge that is more universal. And keeping in mind that universalism, in any form, has gone distinctly out of fashion amongst philosophers; I do not seek to speak of universal truth but only for the opportunity for universal appreciation.
Michael Schmidt is a non-academic who discussed this problem in the opening pages of his book, Lives of the Poets. In an imagined conversation, Schmidt hears the words of his practically minded father telling him that the experts will 'have his guts for garters," and asking him what hope he has of "escaping unscathed." The answer to such a question is, of course, that Schmidt had no hope of escaping anything. In fact, any non-expert who steps into this kind of arena expects the slings and arrows of professional criticism to rain down upon him.
But why should a growing technocracy and the threat of professional ridicule stop anyone who is determined to speak his or her mind on a matter of importance? And if someone does decide to undertake such a journey, I am not certain that they should feel compelled to justify themselves to the barking dogs of specialization or any of the members of the public who happen to support them. After all, the most important thing to remember is that art and poetry belong equally to all of us. And, far from having a monopoly on knowledge, I believe that academics develop such specialized viewpoints concerning all of the arts that they often lack the passionate engagement necessary for true aesthetic insight. For example, while every professor of Art History may teach her students of Van Gogh and his place in post-impressionism, few seem concerned with his plea to human compassion. And most professors, stable members of the bourgeoisie that they are, would be unable to see a man such as Van Gogh, if they actually met him, as anything more than a drunkard and a madman.
But if, after having considered all of this, there are still readers who question the wisdom of such an undertaking, I point them to the great essayist Michel de Montaigne. While Montaigne’s only professional accreditation was a law degree, he single-handedly invented a literary genre and the dozens of essays that he wrote are full of insights that span the spectrum of human endeavor. Montaigne, one of history’s great skeptics, made no pretence of specialized knowledge and readily offered himself up to ridicule in the hope that while studying himself and his own opinions, he was really studying humankind.
“I have no doubt,” Montaigne once wrote, “that I often happen to speak of things that are better treated by masters of the craft... and whoever shall catch me in ignorance will do nothing against me.” I deeply sympathize with such a sentiment because I believe that passion for a subject such as poetry is, in the final analysis, more important than learning and offers the opportunity for knowledge that is more universal. And keeping in mind that universalism, in any form, has gone distinctly out of fashion amongst philosophers; I do not seek to speak of universal truth but only for the opportunity for universal appreciation.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Shelley and the power of poetry
In the past generation a major revaluation of Percy Shelley has been taking place. There have traditionally been two public images of Shelley: one was of a selfish rouge, an atheist with little or no regard for others; and the other image was of an ethereal, fairy like, asexual, sprite. Slowly there has been emerging a more life-like picture of a genuine flesh and blood creature with all the emotions and feelings of a man of his age. One important part of the revaluation of Shelley has been that of his ideas of poetry. Newer readings of Shelley great essay A Defence of Poetry have concentrated on the ambiguous and ambivalent attitude toward poetry that Shelley displays there.
John Hodgson, in his book, Coleridge, Shelley and Transcendental Inquiry, contends that far from having a positive, transcendental view of poetry, Shelley harboured deep-seated negative view of poetry’s potential. Without going into the details of Hodgson’s long and turgid arguments, I say that what is wrong with Hodgson’s view, and most academic notions about poetry and art, is that he is unable to view Shelley’s work with the eyes of a poet. Hodgson makes far too many demands concerning logical consistency and fails to understand that Shelley possesses ambivalent views of poetry because, as a great artist, he could not do otherwise. Shelley’s essay, for all of its remarkable insight, must express an underlying ambivalence because the project of art is one that constantly moves from doubt to transcendence. In his brighter moments Shelley, like most artists, is certain of the transcendence of poetry and insists that a poet is someone who “must put himself in the place of another and of many other; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of every new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilation to their own nature all other thoughts and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.”
But this is the optimistic side of the great artist speaking: the youthful sprite who is able to see the universe in a grain of sand. But the pendulum of an artist like Shelley must swing in both extremes if he is to be the creative force that he is. Thus in the same essay Shelley can express this much darker and pessimistic view of the poet’s life: “a poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”
The ground on which great artists must stand is never secure, it shakes and moves; at one moment it crumbles into an abyss of blackness and then in the next moment it rises up to God. Look for this ambivalence in the great artists you admire and it will enrich their work while it enriches you.
John Hodgson, in his book, Coleridge, Shelley and Transcendental Inquiry, contends that far from having a positive, transcendental view of poetry, Shelley harboured deep-seated negative view of poetry’s potential. Without going into the details of Hodgson’s long and turgid arguments, I say that what is wrong with Hodgson’s view, and most academic notions about poetry and art, is that he is unable to view Shelley’s work with the eyes of a poet. Hodgson makes far too many demands concerning logical consistency and fails to understand that Shelley possesses ambivalent views of poetry because, as a great artist, he could not do otherwise. Shelley’s essay, for all of its remarkable insight, must express an underlying ambivalence because the project of art is one that constantly moves from doubt to transcendence. In his brighter moments Shelley, like most artists, is certain of the transcendence of poetry and insists that a poet is someone who “must put himself in the place of another and of many other; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of every new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilation to their own nature all other thoughts and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.”
But this is the optimistic side of the great artist speaking: the youthful sprite who is able to see the universe in a grain of sand. But the pendulum of an artist like Shelley must swing in both extremes if he is to be the creative force that he is. Thus in the same essay Shelley can express this much darker and pessimistic view of the poet’s life: “a poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”
The ground on which great artists must stand is never secure, it shakes and moves; at one moment it crumbles into an abyss of blackness and then in the next moment it rises up to God. Look for this ambivalence in the great artists you admire and it will enrich their work while it enriches you.
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