Wait. Did you just "Not all men" me? :)

Yes, I agree that that dismissive attitude toward women's poetry is not very common around here. The very fact that I feel comfortable griping about it here suggests that I'm pretty confident that the present company does not share the dismissive views about which I'm complaining.

While I'm issuing caveats, I'll add that I am aware that everyone is free to dislike anyone else's poetry for any number of legitimate reasons, regardless of the sexes of the author and reader. I think Andrew F. stated his case beautifully--he admires Stallings' and Espaillat's work, but he generally prefers a different style. Fair enough.

And I'm also keenly aware that if a male reader doesn't like something I've written, it is far more likely to be due to my shortcomings as a writer than to his shortcomings as a reader.

We good?

Sorry again for derailing everyone's train of thought. I believe we were discussing philosophy?

I agree with you on that too, Julie. I love the Sphere, yall mens are truly fabulous xox. But there's no denying the facts out there, as personally experienced by yours truly, and as collected by VIDA.

OK, back to philosophy. But I might have gone beyond "not all men"-ing you to the realm of "hardly any men"-ing you. After all, I am not solely responsible for Emily Dickinson's reputation. In some other thread at some other time, I'd be curious to see the basis for suggesting that a substantial number of male poets and literary critics are dismissive of women's poetry as being by and for chicks. (And I'd also wonder if this is more common than female poets and literary critics who are dismissive of male poetry as being by and for other men).

As far as philosophy in poetry is concerned, my take is that poetry often gives philosophers ideas to expound upon, but so does everything else that reacts to the world and somehow reflects on the nature of consciousness and identity and sentience. But I don't think there's anything distinctively philosophical about poetry or poets.

[cross posted with Mary]

Doesn't every group have their own Weltanschauung? Don't we respond most to poems that share our Weltanschauung? Yes and yes. The fact is that men in general dominate the world, including poetry, including even the Sphere. Just look at Met or Non-Met: mostly men posts. Men have a long history of being dominant, and they naturally feel more comfortable speaking out, making judgments, moving freely in the world. I don't blame men for this situation, but it's helpful for men to recognize it and listen to what the girls are saying. I'll always be grateful for being listened to at the Sphere - in my poems that is. But I'm fully aware that because my name is female, I'm in a different .. uh, sphere.

I agree Mary, all clubs have a character, and poetry forums are no different.
But the Sphere has a deserved reputation for tough criticism and a lot of women are put off by that approach. There are many poetry forums dominated by women, Neopoet is one. These are self-congratulatory forums with little serious criticism.
There are also many forums that have a graduated approach; the Sphere does not, the three sections are critiqued with equal harshness.
Myspace used to be very popular with female poets who wanted 'appreciation' rather than criticism.
Some were good poets who found being publicly critiqued very distressing although they were often interested in private emailed critique.
Women have very different approaches in many areas of life. Vive la différence.

If one is using a measuring stick to give women their due, fuhget about it. They have won 11 of 20 Nemerov contests. I'd say they've earned it in the face of a man-dominated world. Hmmm.

Is this thought big enough to qualify? It might be, for me, her best.

The tongue says loneliness

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,
but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,
nor Thursday
reach back to Wednesday
as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell,
but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,
lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

- Jane Hirshfield

Mistaken Post

I was pleased that this conversation prompted me to rediscover two excellent women poets of different times and styles, both however of great perspicacity in their own right, manifested in good poetry. Anne Carson I happened on, having put my nose into The Oxford Book of American Poetry today. I noticed that all her poems in said anthology betray “Big question” subjects even from their titles; assuming the existence of God is a big question…(from the Truth about God: My religion, God’s Woman, God’s Mother, God’s Justice). The bigness of the titles belie the playfulness and lightness of her angle by which she investigates these matters with wit. I’ll venture there is a playfulness and lightness of touch in the approach to the biggest questions of humankind to be found.

God's Work
Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God.
The kind of sadness that is a black suction pipe extracting you
from your own navel and which the Buddhists call

"no mindcover" is a sign of God.
The blind alleys that run alongside human conversation
like lashes are a sign of God.

God's own calmness is a sign of God.
The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
Solid pieces of silence.

From these diverse signs you can see how much work remains to do.
Put away your sadness, it is a mantle of work.

Her work is at once, very personal and at the same time universal, deep without ponderousness and playful with depth. You'll notice how the abstract interchanges with and is manifested in the concrete, thus we go from the general in one line, specific in the next and back to general in the last:

God's own calmness is a sign of God.
The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
Solid pieces of silence.

I think there is also something else to be said about the idea that abstract words like “solitude”, “fate” "dullness”, “love, "death,"” “folly” are necessarily everywhere used ponderous, dull, or pompous in effect. Of course any selection of words can be any number of things, but abstract words such as these can be used in no such way at all. In light verse, for instance, big conceptual words can be used for satire, and a whole array of effects not at all necessarily dull, ponderous, pompous or really any thing, it's all about the context. Of course, where matters of taste are concerned any one may differ from myself and the opinions I have related.
I love the way Anne Finch (among the first full-fledged woman poets to be published and widely circulated in England) goes form abstract conceptual ideas to specific and personal imagery, and matter, form didactic genius to confessional, etc.
Note: Anne Finch suffered from recurrent bouts of depression, also known as 'spleen', 'melancholy', or the 'vapors'. The description given in this poem was admired by contemporary physicians for its clinical accuracy (talk about a dose of truth finding its way in poetry). Her poetry sparkles with witty commentary and playful humor. She writes with clear conviction of what she observes of life and experiences, is now confessional and now universal, or both; she treats big truths with the same rhetorical facility as her male counterparts, yet is no mere imitation of male writers but her own voice. That voice, direct, personal and immediate. It has been suggested that she may be the best woman poet in England prior to the nineteenth century (McGovern, 1992). The poem was her best known and most widely acclaimed work during her lifetime, canonized today, etc. At her best she exalts and really is that heroic tenor heroic poetry's lofty strains would be. Reading it I find truth aplenty involved and flashing in every line. Satire arises at times too even.

The Spleen

What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abused Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause could find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm.
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolved into a Panic Fear;
On Sleep intruding dost thy Shadows spread,
Thy gloomy Terrors round the silent Bed,
And crowd with boding Dreams the Melancholy Head:
Or, when the Midnight Hour is told,
And drooping Lids thou still dost waking hold,

Thy fond Delusions cheat the Eyes,
Before them antick Specters dance,
Unusual Fires their pointed Heads advance,
And airy Phantoms rise.
Such was the monstrous Vision seen,
When Brutus (now beneath his Cares oppressed,
And all Rome's Fortunes rolling in his Breast,
Before Philippi's latest Field,
Before his Fate did to Octavius lead)
Was vanquish'd by the Spleen.
...
Now the Jonquil o'ercomes the feeble Brain;
We faint beneath the Aromatic Pain,
Till some offensive Scent thy Pow'rs appease,
And Pleasure we resign for short, and nauseous Ease.

In ev'ry One thou dost possess,
New are thy Motions, and thy Dress:
Now in some Grove a listening Friend
Thy false Suggestions must attend,
Thy whisper'd Griefs, thy fancy'd Sorrows hear,
Breath'd in a Sigh, and witness'd by a Tear;

Whilst in the light, and vulgar Crowd,
Thy Slaves, more clamorous and loud,
By Laughters unprovoked, thy Influence too confess.
In the Imperious Wife thou Vapors art,
Which from o'erheated Passions rise
In Clouds to the attractive Brain,
Until descending thence again,
Thro' the o'er-cast, and show'ring Eyes,
Upon her Husband's soften'd Heart,
He the disputed Point must yield,
Something resign of the contested Field...

The Fool, to imitate the Wits,
Complains of thy pretended Fits,
And Dullness, born with him, would lay
Upon thy accidental Sway;

Because, sometimes, thou dost presume
Into the ablest Heads to come:
That, often, Men of Thoughts refined,
Impatient of unequal Sense,
Such slow Returns, where they so much dispense,
Retiring from the Crowd, are to thy Shades inclined.
O'er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail:
I feel thy Force, whilst I against thee rail;
I feel my Verse decay, and my cramped Numbers fail.
Thro' thy black Jaundice I all Objects see,
As Dark, and Terrible as Thee,
My Lines decry'd, and my Employment thought
An useless Folly, or presumptuous Fault:
Whilst in the Muses Paths I stray,
Whilst in their Groves, and by their secret Springs
My Hand delights to trace unusual Things,
And deviates from the known, and common way;
Nor will in fading Silks compose
Faintly th' inimitable Rose,

Fill up an ill-drawn Bird, or paint on Glass
The Sov'reign's blurred and undistinguished Face,
The threatening Angel, and the speaking Ass.

Patron thou art to ev'ry gross Abuse,
The sullen Husband's feign'd Excuse,
When the ill Humour with his Wife he spends,
And bears recruited Wit, and Spirits to his Friends.
The Son of Bacchus pleads thy Pow'r,
As to the Glass he still repairs,
Pretends but to remove thy Cares,
Snatch from thy Shades one gay, and smiling Hour,
And drown thy Kingdom in a purple Show'r.
When the Coquette, whom ev'ry Fool admires,
Would in Variety be Fair,
And, changing hastily the Scene
From Light, Impertinent, and Vain,
Assumes a soft, a melancholy Air,

And of her Eyes rebates the wand'ring Fires,
The careless Posture, and the Head reclined,
The thoughtful, and composed Face,
Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent Mind,
Allows the Fop more liberty to gaze,
Who gently for the tender Cause inquires;
The Cause, indeed, is a Defect in Sense,
Yet is the Spleen alleged, and still the dull Pretense.
But these are thy fantastic Harms,
The Tricks of thy pernicious Stage,
Which do the weaker Sort engage;
Worse are the dire Effects of thy more powerful Charms.
By Thee Religion, all we know,
That should enlighten here below,
Is veil'd in Darkness, and perplexed
With anxious Doubts, with endless Scruples vexed,
And some Restraint imply'd from each perverted Text.

Whilst Touch not, Taste not, what is freely giv'n,
Is but thy niggard Voice, disgracing bounteous Heav'n.
From Speech restrain'd, by thy Deceits abused,
To Deserts banish'd, or in Cells reclus'd,
Mistaken Votaries to the Pow'rs Divine,
Whilst they a purer Sacrifice design,
Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy Shrine.
In vain to chase thee ev'ry Art we try,
In vain all Remedies apply,
In vain the Indian Leaf infuse,
Or the parch'd Eastern Berry bruise;
Some pass, in vain, those Bounds, and nobler Liquors use.
Now Harmony, in vain, we bring,
Inspire the Flute, and touch the String.
From Harmony no help is had;
Music but soothes thee, if too sweetly sad,
And if too light, but turns thee gaily Mad.

Tho' the Physicians greatest Gains,
Altho' his growing Wealth he sees
Daily increased by Ladies Fees,
Yet dost thou baffle all his studious Pains.
Not skillful Lower thy Source could find,
Or thro' the well-dissected Body trace
The secret, the mysterious ways,
By which thou dost surprise, and prey upon the Mind.
Tho' in the Search, too deep for Humane Thought,
With unsuccessful Toil he wrought,
'Til thinking Thee to've catch'd, Himself by thee was caught,
Retain'd thy Prisoner, thy acknowledged Slave,
And sunk beneath thy Chain to a lamented Grave.

P.S. I agree with you Mary, it's a good thing to counterbalance a preponderance of male with a greater proportion of female voices, as balance is better than imbalance.
Best, Erik

Wait a minute. Does this mean that taking care of my chickens, and growing vines over their coop and run, is actually a poetic act?

Thanks,

Bill

Far more so, perhaps, that what often passes for a poetic act on the page.

Nemo

May I prod this back to recent poetry that is both about Big Stuff and assertively Formal? Much as I relish the Jane Hirshfield quoted above, it has no regular rhyme or rhythmic structure. What is there is ideas well stated, but it is close to formal verse in some ways. Quite by accident, I encountered her and it at a small poetry reading, and dared to suggest to her a minor change in the last sentence. Oh, no, she naturally said, firmly. Well, I went away serendipitously impressed and 99.6 % satisfied.

What would be the effect of framing much the same poem in a more patterned and thus more memorable form? Would it rise (or for those who are jealous of Pope, descend) to the level of Alexander Pope?

How much of our esthetic is infected by the modern hatred in the arts of Charm?

Hi Ross,

I started out, and still post, on another forum. I believe there are more women posting there then men, and in my opinion the crit there is significantly tougher than here.This makes me wonder how easy it is to attribute the gender imbalance at the Sphere to toughness of crits.

Presumably there are a lot of other possibilities? Maybe more men than women like to write in form? There's certainly less metrical poetry on the other forum. Alternatively, if you look at the recurring spats and public unpleasantness that occurs here, it does seem to almost always be between men. Maybe that what's puts women off? There aren't any spats at the other forum because the mods don't allow it. In fact, the mods there are very strict, and every rule is policed, and no one argues with the mods, except very, very politely, defensiveness in the face of critique is not tolerated, and critters are not to allowed to argue with other critters opinions. Maybe men's egos are less well adapted to that level of constraint. I'm sure I could come with other possibilities if I tried.

I guess one can generalise from any observed difference but, I am reluctant to accept that women don't like straightforward, honest critique because a) the women I know on poetry forums welcome it, and b) I also tend to assume that anyone looking to improve welcomes it (once they've gotten their ego out the way), and I don't see any a priori reason why women should be any different in this respect.

But what do I know? I would be interested to hear the views of women on the Sphere. Why are there less women here?

best,

Matt

Nah... Andrew's issue is interesting and I won't add to the distractions.

I just answered Mary off the top of my head, I can't really remember if many of the poetry forums I have used had more women than men. I know the Sphere is less strictly moderated than some ( but some have no mods at all),
Getting back to the original idea I think many may feel the Sphere has declined because most of us went through a heyday, when online poetry forums suddenly opened up poetry in a way that hadn't occurred since the invention of printing.
I have a poet friend I met online who is one of my closest friends, I have watched her daughter grow up, her marriage fail, another marriage succeed, her son born and now go to school. All conveyed online.
Amazing, such a close friend yet I have never met her. I'm sure many on the Sphere feel that way, although you may have turned online friendships into actual friendships.

Much as I'd love to keep arguing that I'm right :) , I'm sorry that the gender issue seems to be derailing Andrew F's original philosophical tangent, which I frankly found more interesting. I agree with Roger that perhaps we could save the gender-specific discussion for another occasion. Right now I'd rather put time and energy into reading and thinking about people's philosophical observations, from which I'm learning a lot.

If I were asked to name the most philosophically interesting contemporary poets I have read, Wislawa Szymborska and Mary Oliver would probably be the first two names I'd think to mention. Most of their work is free verse, so far as I know.

One of my favorite philosophical poems by a committed formalist is the following. It’s so simple, and yet …


Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be—
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

-- Robert Frost

I just dropped in after a couple months of not being in poetic mode. Lots of food for thought on this thread. Lots I could say, too, but that would involve galloping madly off in all directions, so I won't.

Thanks, all.

Philosophy seems to encompass a very wide area if it includes Frost's poem. It seems to me an essentially poetic statement.

I read it as a comment on epistemology, John, and human thought's ability to grasp the "really real" -- the noumenon, in other words.

Or I should say: that is one of several ways I read it...

Seems like a good reading to me, Michael. I think the Frost poem is a really fine philosophical piece, as many of his poems are.

And John, if you believe Parmenides, who said that thought and being are the same, heck yeah, poetry and philosophy have a lot in common. Then again, what Parmenides meant by “thought” isn’t what post-Cartesian philosophy means by it. Poetic philosophy or philosophical poetry puts the mind back in the whole, even if the whole is broken. Much modern philosophy does the opposite:

A Fragment

Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died.
God took the spinning jenny
Out of his side.

Where got I that truth?
Out of a medium's mouth,
Out of nothing it came,
Out of the dark night where lay
The crowns of Nineveh.

--Yeats

Thanks, Andrew. I'm glad to know it also makes sense to you.

I think Frost had a genius for expressing sophisticated thoughts in simple images and words. And I think he was a master at multiple layers of meaning.

A belated thought - and going back to the State of the Sphere - if we really think it needs a boost, why not give some thought to reviving the Tipsy Muse?

Forgive me, Andrew, for letting this sit so long. Things were overtaken by events, and then I got lost in research, which was ultimately unproductive.

The first question is still a mystery to me. Some don't like to put down their thoughts, out of concerns they'll change tomorrow. Others, like me, have entered into discussions with philosophers, and found my own thoughts cloudy, inexact, unsupportable. We all know so little about the history of aesthetics that it's easy to be bested in such discussions. Still others sincerely believe in Lao Tzu, and hold that those who know don't talk about it, and those who talk about it know little. I get really frustrated with that one.

On the issue at hand, what is beauty? Is it objective or subjective? Is it in the poem, or in the spirit of the reader? Can a poem possess qualities of beauty, which then stimulate the reader's mind? What kinds of poems are actually beautiful? Are poems beautiful in themselves, or only if they lead us to ethical action or intellectual insight? Does beauty lead us to other worthwhile things, and what is its relation to those things?

It seems to me these are the core questions of aesthetics, and the answers supplied are often unsatisfying. Take Diotima. Now, I'm rather fond of her. She says we should contemplate and study the bodies of those who we find physically attractive, and revel in the beauty of the loved one. Seems a worthy goal. But then she says this appreciation of physical beauty is simply preparation for appreciating other forms of beauty, intellectual beauty, the beauty of laws, etc. So I turn away, agreeing with Barthelme: 'I don't want to contemplate a silly red towel. I want to look at the beautiful Snow White arse itself!'

Plato is even less satisfying. Forms themselves are beautiful, but no poem can have real beauty (see under Emerson), since the most beautiful thing is objective truth, and no poem can fully possess that. This is why Keats' monism is so unsatisfying: one thing *is* the other, but we can't have either, since they only exist "out there" somewhere. All we can do is dimly remember a time when we existed in that pure realm of forms, and so poetry's only role is the equivalent of Proust's madeleine.

Now, Yeats says 'measurement began our might,' and so sides with the pythagoreans. Beauty comes from form and relationships, from numbers, and the best poets naturally embody such things without thinking (cf. Pope: I lisped in numbers for the numbers came). The people who point to the relations of music and mathematics must agree with this idea. And no-one's going to say Bach isn't beautiful. Still, after a little while, I admit to getting bored as he runs through all 16 progressions in sequence. It's like reading the Prelude: I want to throw the book across the room.

Before we leave the old people, there's one other idea they clung to: beauty is not truth, beauty is good. And by partaking of it... well, the poem is like syrup of ipecac: it purges the bad out of us. The most beautiful poem will make us throw up the most, and then we'll feel better: more balanced, more healthy. I shouldn't make fun of Aristotle this way, it's almost like heresy. But honestly...

As long as we're making fun of people, let's make fun of Shelley, shall we? Mount Blanc is literally awesome (yes, he's stealing this stuff from Kant) it's so big, it fills us with a sense of wonder precisely because it's beyond us. It takes away our puny thoughts, and leaves our mind empty, the way an overwhelming orgasm does. Cynics would say it no longer counts, because we now have enough explosives to blow up the whole mountain. But we can't blow up the universe, and contemplating its vastness leads to that same sense of awe. Under this idea, the deep space images Hubble sends back are the most beautiful things we have. Maybe.

But it sounds like we're going up in a balloon. Back on earth, some say beauty is conflict, or arises out of conflict and juxtaposition. Nabokov would hate the idea he's repeating Hegel and Nietzsche, but he does exactly that. Beauty becomes synthetic, you need two things for the synthesis to happen, and as soon as you achieve equilibrium, the new conflict leads to imbalance. This is why new poems have to be written. Adorno was wrong, we shouldn't stop writing poetry, the problem is that the world had gotten out of balance, and the only way to rectify the world is to write new poems to restore the harmony. Very hard to argue with that one, in spite of all the misreadings of Auden.

We haven't mentioned spiritual aesthetics, and I admit to being put off by them. Take Christianity: you're supposed to do two things - contemplate the cross, and contemplate the eucharist. Remember Diotima: contemplation leads us towards the beatific vision, and what could be more important than that? And it's like looking at Mount Blanc: we're so over-awed, our minds become empty, allowing room for something else to flow into us. The idea isn't unique to spirituality: when I first went out with Kate, we went for coffee. She seemed so beautiful I lost all my words, I couldn't even talk. W.C. Williams says the same thing: "Shaken by her beauty." The moment was transformational, it changed my life. This is the justification for beauty in poetry: a truly beautiful poem leaves us speechless, and changes us in a deep way. Music and painting can do the same - they're not simply objects (this is the mistake the New Critics made), they are truly transformative, real agents in our lives.

But why and how? We've just gone past halloween, a pale imitation of the Samhain my ancestors celebrated. They believed that, on this one evening, the barriers that separate the various realms became a little less solid, and movement between them became possible. It's a nice idea. Should we accept it?

For a long time, I didn't. Then one day, I went to one of Kate's concerts. There were all kinds of people there, rich and poor, educated and unlettered, young and old. I happened to be sitting next to a couple of 80 year old nuns. And when they heard her singing, after just a little while, they started to weep, not tears of sadness, but of joy. I've seen her have the same effect at funerals: people transformed from mourning to joyous peace. It's striking, and perhaps unbelievable until one experiences it. Accept, for a moment, the effect is real. But again, why and how?

The only answer I can come up with is the beauty of her voice. It has nothing to do with the words, or with numbers, or proportions, or study, or ethics, or Truth. When she's able to open herself completely, the beauty of her voice itself opens us, empties us, the barriers between realms come down, and something flows into us, which brings us peace and joy, such incredible joy we begin weeping.

That's the poem I want to write, a poem that can do that. If I were a painter, I'd want to paint an image which can do that. Is there some secret golden chord, some transformative line of poetry? Would I even recognize it if I accidentally wrote it? I have no idea. And if it worked on me, would it work on a reader?

I've already gone on too long, and I have to go feed the chickens and gather the eggs. I can hear them clucking outside my window. If you've gotten this far, thank you for your patience. I really wish I could solve this problem.

Best,

Bill

I wonder as if the problem is the wish to "solve" beauty by dissecting the eyes or spinning the blood of the image into its separate parts so you can find the right proportion of salt to iron in a fair curve.

Maybe you don't mean that sort of thing but it sounds like it sometimes.

I hope beauty remains an untrackable, undefinable nonsense just barely making it across the rope of translation, barefoot, no net below. Forever.

If you meet beauty on the road, kill it.

Best,

Ed

"On the issue at hand, what is beauty? Is it objective or subjective?"

The objective is vanishing before our eyes. Turns out it's all subjective.

It's objective when applied to standards, but the standards are subjective.

Thanks for that great post, Bill (#224, above). Whatever it is in Kate’s voice, in an algebraic equation, or for that matter in the Kaaba or the ocean that moves people to the core—that’s beauty. I think that is the gist of what you say there at the end of the post. Everybody knows it when they’ve experienced it, and everybody wants that experience, however we define it or can’t define it, wherever we find it or don’t find it. It isn’t surprising that it is so hard to talk about or define—it would be surprising if it were otherwise, with anything that has such scope and power.

A brief disagreement with your characterization of Christian theories of beauty: Pseudo-Dionysius. I can’t do better than to say, as he does, that whatever beauty is, it transcends any particular manifestation of it—since it is experienced in so many ways and forms. Like being. The fact that I can say “I am,” and that it is true, doesn’t make it any less true when someone else says it. The “I” transcends the individual who says it. Megalomania (i.e., everyday delusion enjoyed by us all) is forgetting this. Beauty too is above and beyond its particular form. If this were not so, it is hard to see how it could be transformative in the way you describe. Beauty’s un-pin-down-able-ness, which you and Ed and Andrew M. refer to, comes from its not being a thing among other things. It can’t be possessed or googled, figured out or embalmed. The experience of it takes us out of the isolation of me-in-here subjectivity, into direct communion, to the I-am-no-longer-I, as Juan Ramón Jiménez puts it: Yo no soy yo. I am not I. Soy este / que va a mi lado sin yo verlo, / que, a veces, voy a ver, / y que, a veces olvido. “I am this one who goes along by my side without my seeing him, who at times I am on the verge of seeing, and who at times I forget.” The experience of beauty is the remembering, so whatever beauty is “in itself,” it has got to be something akin to that not-I or Other which is who we really are.

That’s what I understand by the curious phrase “Beauty is a transcendental.”

Someone, I think it was the sculptor Eric Gill, said that the last thing an artist should aim for is beauty. And he was a follower of Maritain. Gill’s point was, just do the work and do it well, and the beauty will come—or it won’t.

All art is a matter of objective subjectivity. And Keats nailed beauty. It's silly to go into such long and tortured definitions of these things. "It's Academic".

from Bill Lantry's post #224: "Some don't like to put down their thoughts, out of concerns they'll change tomorrow."


In Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, he reports this exchange between himself and Michael Welfare, one of the founders of the Dunkers. When Franklin suggested to Welfare that he defend the sect against scurrilous attacks by publishing the articles of their belief, Welfare responded:

. . . .When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God
. . . .to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which
. . . .we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had
. . . .esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased
. . . .to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving, and
. . . .our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we have arrived at the
. . . .end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological
. . . .knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of
. . . .faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and
. . . .perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors
. . . .still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had
. . . .done to be something sacred, never to be departed from.

Sounds like wisdom to me.

Jan

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie discuss the truth of beauty, the beauty of truth.

https://youtu.be/cQo9ldCBrvQ

Jan Hodge's quote is worth remembering. The fact that a thing can't be defined and given solid immutable borders does not diminish it, but rather is indicative of its worth. That is, when speaking of the larger subjects. Where many religions go wrong is where they trade guidance—which is without hard (immobile) borders—for dogma, which is noted for its inflexibility, and its conceit. I think Lao Tzu's quote that Bill mentioned is a generalization that may lead to a sense of the truth, that truth being the insufficiency of words to encompass or limit the highest concepts. However, noting Lao Tzu was no slouch when it came to using words, it was not meant as dogma. For another example, the Muslim world in a sense lost their understanding of (and thus their being guided by) the Quran by accepting the dogma of various "sheikhs" and interpreters and compilers of alleged prophetic sayings. So they came to accept these by rote and stopped using their minds. Then they are shocked when I tell them one of the most frequently used phrases in the Quran is "Will you not use your minds?"

Also re philosophy itself. It is important to consider great ideas and deeper meanings. But therein also lies the danger of "arriving" at the final ultimate truth which one then enshrines, thus losing the possibility of further growth as described so well by Mr. Welfare. (And where oh where did the Welfare family go?)

Delicious, Ross.

I agree. By linking to that YouTube you granted me an awesome boon that I didn't even know that I craved. And I do crave awesome boons.

Not all men do.

Well then Rick, it’s a silliness that has resulted in such secondary sillinesses as Chartres Cathedral, the Enneads of Plotinus, and the Florentine Renaissance. For non-European sillinessess how about Avicenna or al-Ghazzali, who based much of their thinking on Plotinus along with key passages from the Quran. All light years beyond Keats, who is great but fragmentary along with the time he lived in. Name me one artistic production of the present that approaches the beauty of Alhambra. And yet a long, rich culture of discourse on the nature of beauty had a lot to do with the preparation that it took to create such a masterpiece.

I can see the sense in choosing not to talk about it, or in thinking that talking about it inhibits creative practice in the present. Writing a poem is a lot more fun. But to dismiss talking about it as a sterile academic exercise is to ignore the facts: vast edifices of artistic realization far beyond anything possible in our own time, inspired and sustained by the sort of talk you’re writing off as “silly.”

“Objective subjectivity,” and that’s that. If only the great aesthetic theorists of the past had known it was so simple. Jeesh.

I'm with Rick.

Exactly. In an odd way, some responses remind me of that old joke about the guy who is born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Then he argues that any discussion of the finer points of batting is just silly.

Newton had a better view: we only see a little further because we have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants.

But the whole know-nothing position is curiously American. We even see it in our politics. One side says "I built my business all by myself." And when the other side says "You didn't build the roads to transport your goods, you didn't build the network you use to communicate, you didn't build the schools that train the people who work with you," they get really, really mad. And say unpleasant things.

Never mind that Keats' 'beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that's the end of it,' is just silly. If A *is* A, it can't also be B, unless of course everything is one, in which case it makes no sense to name A and B. Never mind that at best it's an undergraduate's view of Plato (if only Keats had lived longer!). It's especially ironic when formalists repeat it, since Plato believed beauty is form enough, and that 'the form F *is* F.' And that only beauty is *both* a form and a sensory experience.

You can tell I'm a little frustrated. I don't understand how we can draw such clear lines between learning, knowing, and doing. It seems to me they are interwoven and interrelated. I don't fully agree with Maritain's definition that art is "a virtue of the practical intellect that aims at making," but when he says 'since art is a virtue that aims at making, to be an artist requires aiming at making beautiful things,' I'm right on board. Maybe that's because I believe virtue can be taught, discussed, learned, and practiced.

Maybe that's the theological difference here. If one believes, with the Spartans, that virtue can not be taught, that it (like artistic ability) either exists or doesn't exist within the individual, then every discussion of the subject would be pointless. On the other hand, that would also mean workshops are completely pointless. ;)

Best,

Bill

Let's tighten up here :
If A *is* A, it can't also be B, unless of course they map exactly onto each other, in which case it makes no sense to name separately A and B --- except if A and B are terms from different realms of discourse --- which "truth" and "beauty" (as of a summer's day) certainly are.

Doesn't Plato's Good entail Truth and Beauty? (Logos and Cosmos?)