I would say most modern philosophers shy away from defining truth, beauty or other broad abstracts like freedom, love etc. Wittgenstein famously said it's better to shut up than spin a lot of words that simply end up a tower of Babel.
Best, philosophically, to concentrate on things words can handle.
And as for the Allambra, the world is full of modern wonders, I am typing on one right now.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door,
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

- William Blake, "The Garden of Love"

Even if the eye/ear for beauty cannot be taught (which I am not necessarily saying) the workshop wouldn't be pointless if its goal was more about using the tools to shape the "stuff" skillfully in order to match the expectations/vision of the artist.

And besides what Allen said, which was a fair point, maybe Keats wasn't making an algebraic equation as much as saying that the something was connected across these particular distinctions that wasn't being seen or understood as the same "stuff" in some way. Such an idea doesn't collapse all the distinctions in the universe like your suggesting. Why would it.

Some posts in this discussion make me think of the guy on third base who is so busy calculating bat speed, wind velocity, and correct hormonal dosing that he isn't doesn't even realize that baseball is a shamanic ritual involving mitts under the mattress, hot dogs, and Babe Ruth's lucky socks.

Not to get gnarly, but I'd develop Rick's "objective subjectivity" to "interestingly realized objective subjectivity" or "attractively realized objective subjectivity".

(Plato, Clamato! Xenophon (with all his faults) was ten times as well-grounded in reality.)

This may seem off-subject, but sometimes what makes a philosophical discussion "productive" (which could mean many subjective things, but generally I'd define to mean "reaching an understanding more comprehensive—and possibly universal— than what was previously understood") is being grounded in survival issues. That includes survival of the spirit as well as the body. I understood Rick's "academic" crit to refer to discussion removed from existential threat or reality. Comfortable and securely positioned people may have the luxury to think and work out ideas, but there often is a certain edge missing, a comprehensive vision, an impetus or urgency to the development of ideas.

"Beauty" and "truth" are much more vital when seen in the light of great difficulties and painful or harrowing circumstances. Many of the great thinkers had periods of wealth/comfort and periods of extreme hardship. Some hardships can be "inner." Emily Dickinson? Or "personal/social." So a "removed" discussion may seem "academic" whereas great ideas came out of vital, urgent issues which thinkers felt compelled to resolve. Having said that, academic work in no way disqualifies one from reaching a high level of vision...as long as one is challenging comfort zones, whatever they may be.

Excellent point Siham. Grace acquires beauty under pressure. Adversity attends the aesthetic. Some of the aversion to the academic pursuit of poetry derives instinctively I think from this realization.

I have nothing against academics, but didn’t this guy put the point fiendishly well...


The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

-- WB Yeats

Yes, Michael F., but Yeats also wrote,

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enameling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake,
Or set upon on a golden branch to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

And for those irritating briars that bind joys and desires mentioned by Ed, here are some hedge clippers:

“I’m with Seyyed.”

One of my heroes is Kant, I think Wittgenstein had him in mind when he warned not to try to answer everything in one book, (to put it simply) but Kant opened up for me the idea of the categories and I have found those
invaluable.
I'd also mention symbolic logic which is part of philosophy. Studying logic made me far more aware of the spuriousness of many arguments.
I think philosophy stands at the top of the humanities and informs them all,
and it can be very practical, 'necessary and sufficient' is a philosophical nostrum I learnt that I have always thought a good saying to apply in life.

Thanks for the different angle on Yeats, Andrew. That’s a good thing.

One more ‘philosophical’ poem, by WS. There are many of hers I could choose from … I’m a fanboi, I own it.



Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

--Wislawa Szymborska

I'm still with Rick. When i write about poetry, I concentrate on the craft of creating poetry - and making it work - and it you do it well that results in art. Art is created by focusing on and working at your art, not from writing about "art", or about other people who write about "art". They may be critics, and they may be philosophers, but talking about art in the abstract is not the same as working your art.

"talking about art in the abstract is not the same as working your art."

I don't think anyone said they were the same thing, Michael. Nor do I see why one thing cancels the other. Rather, they enhance one another for those who, like myself, are so inclined. Setting up false either/or choices seems counter-productive to me: I prefer 'and' to 'or'.

I also think that those who 'work their art', when they talk effectively about that work and that art, are not talking "in the abstract". On the contrary, they are reflecting on their working experience. And nothing is less abstract than experience, regardless of the style of language it is expressed in.

Nemo

I agree. But talking about your art means just that - talking about your art, or (assuming you're a poet) related poets or other artists, with the emphasis on craft. It does not mean rattling off a tour of philosophers and theories. I was at the Picasso sculpture show at MOMA a few weeks ago and it was mind-blowing (if I'm lucky, I'll get a decent ekphrastic poem out of it), and one of the things that struck me was how workmanlike it all was, how his art bent to what materials were available, how the painters and sculptors in that - or any era - influenced each other. That's what I mean by "working" or "talking about" your art; and I have to believe that if Picasso materialized he'd be full of very down-to-earth talk on what he was trying to do, and how the paint or wood or metal had to be handled; and he wouldn't spend a lot of time on Kant or Heidegger or pure theory.

If one were to tally up the poets whose art was aided by discussing the nature of beauty, and those who shied away from discussing beauty in the abstract but yet somehow created beautiful poems, then added in those honest souls who followed some theory down a rabbit hole in pursuit of art and never came back, I think all three groups would be dwarfed by those who have deluded themselves about or even pawned off their bad poetry by dressing it up with bogus theories and movements.

If it works for you to consider these ideals, that's all to the good -- and from where I sit, I'll know it's all to the good not by your cerebral discourses, but by your poems. But for me it comes down to this: I can no more think grandly or long about such things and write than the centipede in that old joke can keep from tripping up when it starts thinking about how to walk. For me, craft and life are the wellsprings of art.

Best,

Ed

Why can't a person be interested in more than one thing? I'm wary of telling other people how they should go about writing, or suggesting that an interest in philosophy or aesthetics is counterproductive for them because it might be for you. Plenty of fine writers had a deep interest in philosophy and aesthetics. Keats didn't only give us an aphorism, but his letters give us some rather profound ruminations on art. And Coleridge was as tedious as any modern philosopher with his philosophical ramblings but still managed to give us Rime of the Ancient Mariner, among other works. I certainly wouldn't suggest that a deep interest in philosophy or the nature of beauty, etc., is a prerequisite for an artist or poet, or that it wouldn't be an actual impediment for some, but I'm wary of artists telling each other how they should go about creating their art. Some poets swear you must use pencil and paper, others insist on getting up early, while others are most productive late at night on their laptops. Just do what you think is right for you and don't presume your methods or your approach are so marvelously successful in your case that others would be a fool not to copy them.

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. ”
-Pablo Picasso

"The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations. Perhaps this has been the principal fault of modern art. The spirit of research has poisoned those who have not fully understood all the positive and conclusive elements in modern art and has made them attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable"(Paris 1923).

"Why can't a person be interested in more than one thing?"

They can. Poets no less than others often pursue dual vocations.

http://sostrenews.com/english-teache...ncis-thompson/

Thank you, Roger. I’ve been struck in this conversation by how defensive people have seemed, as though I or Bill was saying: Ok, we’re going to tie you to a chair now to talk about beauty and make you write a poem at the same time. People have been free to ignore the subject, but have chosen not to. And I’d be blind not to notice that many great artists and writers would have rather filed their taxes than discuss the nature of beauty.

The Picasso example is a case in point. I’m sure you’re right, Michael, that Picasso would have talked the practical hands-on realities of making those sculptures (which I saw in a Newshour documentary just the other day). The same no doubt is true of Michelangelo, no slouch of a sculptor himself. Did you know, however, that his work was informed from start to finish by the Neoplatonic ideas on beauty that were de rigueur at the Academy (there’s that word again) just outside Florence, run by the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who personally translated Plotinus and the so-called Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus? True fact. Those works and discussions they evoked have much to do with the approach to form, the theory of perspective, notion of beauty, that Michelangelo and others were on about. And yet, Michelangelo in his workshop probably would rather have talked about more practical things, his tools, the stone, some little section he couldn't get quite right, the weather, what he was having for lunch.

Of course he didn’t think consciously about Hermes Trismegistus while he was painting or sculpting. But his education in the Neoplatonic philosophy of beauty that catalyzed the Florentine Renaissance was behind everything he did. If you've read his sonnets you’ll have seen references to it.

This is why, Ed, I disagree that the proof of the worthiness of what I’ve stated here is in any poems I write or do not write. The proof is already out there, in the art I mention above, in centuries of Islamic art, in the poetry of Dante or Rumi—all of which was saturated with such thought. Rather, the burden would be on you to show how art in the present, which generally lacks any ideological bearings beyond art as self-expression and a vague sense of art for art’s sake, approaches the scope and transformative power and penetrating depths and heights of the Florentine Renaissance or the Caliphate of Cordoba or for that matter the English or German Romantics. All of which were deeply informed by a consciously articulated, metaphysically-rooted idea of beauty.

And Michael Ferris, wow and thanks on that Szymborska poem. Fabulous.

I think another example of idea integral to the beauty of the out pour would be Gerald Manley Hopkins work that had a lot of idea behind the wild.

Ed, the centipede is just an example of the grand ideas operating intuitively or underneath, and the need to keep them quiet when pen goes to paper, not evidence that the ideas aloud are "silly", right?

I admit I do find this sort of chatter helps me in writing my own centipedia on the closet wall: whose feet are these? where should we go on them? how do we pass on the inscapes, centipede to centipede or even centipede to ant?

What Andrew said (since I have no time for saying more myself right now...though I found myself dreaming this discussion all last night).

Nemo

Yes, that's what I was trying to convey. My own limitations aside, however, there are numerous people out there, and here, who can both talk a good game and play it, too. I can't, and confess a bit of impatience with those who seem to feel everyone should -- in my case, I feel as if they're trying to paste wings on a turtle.

And I agree with Andrew Frisardi, if I understand him correctly, a poet's theories may be worthy even if his or her poems are bad. What I meant is that, personally, I am far more likely to trust or at least listen to a poet's theories if I think his or her poems are good. The proof isn't necessarily in the pudding, but. . . .

Best,

Ed

I want to add a postscript to my last post, which is with Ed’s last couple of posts in mind but which actually applies to this whole section of the thread.

Ed, your response to my earlier Sufi quote on beauty (post #248) seems to suggest that I believe that everyone who ascribes to that mystical or esoteric view writes or ought to write like Rumi. Or even like Rumi’s grandmother. That’s not what I meant. The “radiation on a particular level of reality of the Beauty of the Face of the Beloved” isn’t only beauty that evokes the numinous. It doesn’t have to be that grandiose. Even a small poem with beauty in it carries that quality, even if (much) less radiantly. This is about beauty as such, however it appears, not a contest judged by Donald Trump.

Here's my postscript: An idea of beauty is a raison d’être of the activity of making. It rarely, if ever, means that the work that’s done actually reaches the level of the ideal. This isn’t a question of having an ideal and then living up to it—that would be hopeless. Michelangelo purposely defaced some of his work in marble when it didn’t live up to the internal picture he had. As you no doubt know, he thought of the figures that he shaped from marble as existing already in the material; his job as sculptor was simply to free them from the stone. Beauty as it exists in the work of art comes from the extent to which the artist does or does not do this. There are degrees of it.

For me, a metaphysically rooted idea of beauty gives a reason for being to the arts, since it connects the arts to a larger whole—the same whole “life” belongs to. A basic question in philosophy is: Why is there something rather than nothing? A basic question in the arts is: What’s the point?

Any theory of beauty that isn’t merely “academic” (as the misnomer went) is going to address that.

I wish I hadn't edited out my initial response to your Sufi quote, Andrew -- which was, simply, "Seyyed seems like a good egg" -- instead of going off into the brambles. My tongue is a bit rusty when it comes to this topic, and I regret any awkwardness. I actually do agree with much of what you say.

I very much believe that, though we may only perceive facets of it, there is an ideal of beauty. I'm happy, if sometimes bemused, when others are so taken with the notion that they go on and on about it, like lovers describing the beloved. Do I hide a yawn sometimes? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean their hearts aren't pure. My own spindly shanked, fey-eyed muse, however, is averse to the thought of being mooned over, and does not take well to such serenades, not from my lips, anyway.

Best,

Ed

Ed, I agree strongly.
My own muse seeks beauty and concision equally.

Some well-informed academics that I know would give Catullus a "high-five" just for starters!

I just realized that Yeats' poem above is a good counter-example to Keats : beautiful, but the implications are quite untrue, even for late-Victorian Latinists.