Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say… I don’t mean to be argumentative, but as I remarked in another thread, this is one of “the truffles” that I can’t help sniffing out when I’m in the woods… it is a subject that fascinates me.
Re: Esthetique du Mal.
I read that section, and S1 in particular, as WS’s assertion that he experiences the world far more intensely than the non-physicals, i.e., believers, theists. I read it as taking the argument in “A High Toned Old Christian Woman” to a new level: it is he, and not they, who experience the paradise of “the rotund emotions”, emotions that would swamp the non-physicals.
I’m troubled by the need to compare. How do you judge what another feels? How do you gauge, compared to your own, the rapture and ecstasy of Hopkins at dappled things, Whitman in the mystical moist night air, or Teresa in contemplation? Or how do you measure comparatively the despair of Dostoyevsky, the anguish of Melville, or the passion of Auden? Might not this be a false dichotomy – especially when you argue, as does WS, that your own ideation and imagination largely determine the world?
For example: what I feel at the opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto, or Bach’s “Great” fugue in G minor, and – yes! – the lips of the Sun on my skin, or the trill of the wood thrush at dawn. How could I know to rank ordinally the intensity of my feelings compared to those of anyone else? Why should I care to?
I think of this from Miss Emily, who believed and disbelieved “a thousand times a day”, for it kept faith “nimble”:
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!
Or do I misread?
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