"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy." - Ludwig von Beethoven
Once in another life I acquired a t-shirt for the main purpose of vexing someone whom I wished to vex. Many, many years later, and much worn, it still reads quite clearly. Beethoven is one of my favourite composers, and I was delighted at its defiant proclamation of sense over reason. When my dad read it, his comment was simple: the quotation creates a false dichotomoy between knowing through reason (philosophy) and knowing through the sensed (art). I admitted, at the time begrudgingly, that he was right, and that at the very least philosophers need to accept that art teaches in many ways that reason cannot, and artists need to accept that their philosophies form their art. Well and good.
"The world of the fairy-story is that world which is opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." -Novalis.
I love George MacDonald, and was very excited to finally acquire and begin reading his Phantastes. In the beginning quotation, however, I stumbled upon this sentence and was troubled by it. Perhaps it is intended to mean that we cannot be bound by the rules of the natural world when entering "Faerie"(Tolkien), that we must leave behind our preconceptions and expectations of normal cause-effect, even. Well and good to this, as well. I would like to think that. But it doesn't say that, quite. It says rational truth. Perhaps it is using a dangerous word, or perhaps the translator mis-chose (although I question that: When those Germans go wrong, they get *really* nutty). This seems to me to be once again setting up a false dichotomy. Art is not its own truth; Faerie is not its own truth, and to leave behind the world of truth when entering the world of art is to enter the world of lies. A work of art can depart from the world of literal truth, but not from the world of moral truth: one could even say it must do the former and must not do the latter.
off the cuff, I would say that this continued and insistent dichotomy is the work of arrogance. Find the humble artist, the humble philosopher, the humble scientest, and you have found truth and goodness and beauty--or at least the way there.
02 October 2011
04 April 2011
where to go, where to start
Most people now are looking for "a better place," which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned . . . . I think he gave up the idea taht there is a better place somewhere else. There is no "better place" than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven . . .
"Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen."
-Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
I don't agree with Wendell Berry's views of education, but then, I don't think he understands education as anything except the prevalent view: a means (degree) to an end (more money). He does not, I don't think, understand education as liberal arts, in the ancient sense. Perhaps he still would not agree, but I think maybe he does. What he does understand, and what I do agree with so strongly, is his view of land, and the realization that this is where it must begin, with love of earth and land, with appreciating the value of simplicity and the simple life: renewing the land, renewing homes, continuing cultivation through generations, being able to transmit the values from father to son: the importance of hard work, of working with one's whole self. Speaking of his daughter's unfaithful husband, Nathan says, "It would have been better for Marcus if he had been tireder at night."
It is absurd, I agree, how divorced everything has become. People sit in offices all day and then go to other insides to "work out," rather than having a life and job incorporating both--and surely this is possible without everyone farming. Surely not everything must be so isolated, including families--from each other and from themselves, even, so often husbands and wives and children having completely separate lives.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell works from the presumption that families are not, or at least no longer are, the primary shapers of their children. In modern society, this is often the case: that, as Gladwell asserts, the silences that would be filled with the voices of adults are now filled with cell phones, video games, television, texting, et cetera, ad nauseum. But, of course, this does not have to be the case, and returning to the sort of simplicity that Berry's stories portray would be a good place to start.
"Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen."
-Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
I don't agree with Wendell Berry's views of education, but then, I don't think he understands education as anything except the prevalent view: a means (degree) to an end (more money). He does not, I don't think, understand education as liberal arts, in the ancient sense. Perhaps he still would not agree, but I think maybe he does. What he does understand, and what I do agree with so strongly, is his view of land, and the realization that this is where it must begin, with love of earth and land, with appreciating the value of simplicity and the simple life: renewing the land, renewing homes, continuing cultivation through generations, being able to transmit the values from father to son: the importance of hard work, of working with one's whole self. Speaking of his daughter's unfaithful husband, Nathan says, "It would have been better for Marcus if he had been tireder at night."
It is absurd, I agree, how divorced everything has become. People sit in offices all day and then go to other insides to "work out," rather than having a life and job incorporating both--and surely this is possible without everyone farming. Surely not everything must be so isolated, including families--from each other and from themselves, even, so often husbands and wives and children having completely separate lives.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell works from the presumption that families are not, or at least no longer are, the primary shapers of their children. In modern society, this is often the case: that, as Gladwell asserts, the silences that would be filled with the voices of adults are now filled with cell phones, video games, television, texting, et cetera, ad nauseum. But, of course, this does not have to be the case, and returning to the sort of simplicity that Berry's stories portray would be a good place to start.
24 February 2011
Chasing the Thrill & Snatching at Joy
"People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on 'being in love' for ever . . . In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill that a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction."
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I don't have it handy, but in Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers has a variation on this theme: It is the people who snatch at things, especially love, who, in actuality, do not know what they want and will never attain happiness, let alone love or joy. I read this passage in Lewis and have not been able to shake it from my mind, constantly turning over people I know, some who are so very dear to me, who are unable or at least unwilling to submit to the loss of the initial thrill and so flit from one thing to another, trying to maintain that level of living that is impossible and unfulfilling, both. I have been thinking of it in my own life, too, of the loss of that sort of intense, blinding, world-shattering love and accepting a much quieter, more peaceful sort of love. At times I nearly despised myself for it, thinking I was "settling" or "giving in," but it is neither of those things. Huge conflagrations die out--sometimes immediately, sometimes after burning for days or even weeks. They take too much to maintain. They are too big for themselves. And, more often than not, they are destructive. It is the hearth fire that can burn for years, that provides heat and warmth without consuming everything in its vicinity, that can be maintained and used and enjoyed in the actual living of life. It is the hearth fire, too, that gives the sort of light that one needs to enjoy and explore the new "thrills." When faced with the forest fire, one has no capacity for looking at other things--the fire dominates.
Applied to pleasure in general: Consider for a moment the sorts of things that modern media encourages. It is all about finding the "thrill," about moving from one experience to another, without cohesion or understanding or even necessarily enjoyment--anything to keep from growing bored, to keep from seeing emptiness. For snatching at thrills, whether in art, love, food, music, or anything else, is in fact nothing more than the desperate attempt to hide one's one emptiness, futility and despair.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I don't have it handy, but in Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers has a variation on this theme: It is the people who snatch at things, especially love, who, in actuality, do not know what they want and will never attain happiness, let alone love or joy. I read this passage in Lewis and have not been able to shake it from my mind, constantly turning over people I know, some who are so very dear to me, who are unable or at least unwilling to submit to the loss of the initial thrill and so flit from one thing to another, trying to maintain that level of living that is impossible and unfulfilling, both. I have been thinking of it in my own life, too, of the loss of that sort of intense, blinding, world-shattering love and accepting a much quieter, more peaceful sort of love. At times I nearly despised myself for it, thinking I was "settling" or "giving in," but it is neither of those things. Huge conflagrations die out--sometimes immediately, sometimes after burning for days or even weeks. They take too much to maintain. They are too big for themselves. And, more often than not, they are destructive. It is the hearth fire that can burn for years, that provides heat and warmth without consuming everything in its vicinity, that can be maintained and used and enjoyed in the actual living of life. It is the hearth fire, too, that gives the sort of light that one needs to enjoy and explore the new "thrills." When faced with the forest fire, one has no capacity for looking at other things--the fire dominates.
Applied to pleasure in general: Consider for a moment the sorts of things that modern media encourages. It is all about finding the "thrill," about moving from one experience to another, without cohesion or understanding or even necessarily enjoyment--anything to keep from growing bored, to keep from seeing emptiness. For snatching at thrills, whether in art, love, food, music, or anything else, is in fact nothing more than the desperate attempt to hide one's one emptiness, futility and despair.
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