‘I Forget Myself’ - poem

I Forget Myself

I forget myself like a cloud,

I sing and I sing

and I spin to the future

in mists of white washed wool

when a bird flew past the window, 

making the room seem to blink,

making me remember myself. 

                                   Robert Faeth

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

Plato (again) - as seen by Iris Murdoch

Plato (again) - as seen by Iris Murdoch*:

Art, this “fiction-making-process“ has always been, from the very beginning, mankind’s companion. And most of us are grateful for its existence, the solace, inspiration and insights we derive from it.

Which has not prevented some of the world’s finest writers and philosophers to debate the validity and morality of art, to question the principles of this “fiction-making“.

Among the first and perhaps also most vocal critic of art we find, sadly surprising: Plato! He who recommended (The Republic) exiling poets of drama from the “ideal state“ and he who also proposed a thorough program of censorship (The State).

Plato’s views on art and artists in general are one of the subjects of The Fire and the Sun - Why Plato Banished the Artists by Iris Murdoch, the Irish novelist and philosopher (1919 – 1999) best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. The Fire and the Sun - Why Plato Banished the Artists (1978) is an essay that provocatively tries to illuminate the esthetics of Plato and to defend art against his views.

Murdoch introduces us to Plato’s view on life by evoking the famous Allegory of the Cave. In this fable mankind is represented by a group who is held captive in a cave, chained to face the back wall, where all they can see are shadows cast by a fire which is behind them, some sort of laterna magica, and they take these projections for reality.

Eventually the prisoners find out the truth (by turning around) and then even manage to escape the cave and, for the first time, see the daylight in all its glory. Finally they see the sun itself, the form of the Good, in whose light the truth may be devined.

Murdoch explains how Plato saw artists as the creators of illusion, who, willfully or naively, accept the appearances at the walls of the cave for reality instead of questioning them as they should. A writer who portrays a doctor, in Plato's view, does not possess a doctor's skill but simply "imitates doctors' talk." Because of the charm of their work, such artists may be mistaken as authorities, thereby misleading people further. "Surely any serious man would rather produce real things, such as beds or political activity, than unreal things which are mere reflections of reality.“ Plato considers artists to be meddlers, independent and irresponsible critics. 

She further elaborates on Plato’s often shockingly puritanical view on art and ventures the suspicion that his feelings may contain “an element of envy“. "He had been himself a writer of poetry; and when a man with two talents chooses (or at any rate concentrates upon) one, he may look sourly upon the practitioners of the other."

Lastly she concedes that art in itself is not essential to survival, might even be unnecessary. But she argues that, even if we could be saved without having seen all the beauty art has to offer, “great art points in the direction of the good and is at least more valuable to morale than dangerous”. Providing an easy form of escapism is not what art aims for. Art is there to help to communicate and reveal the nature of reality. If art is "jauntily at home with evil and quick to beautify it," it can also "show how we learn from pain."

"The spiritual ambiguity of art," she writes, "its connection with the 'limitless unconscious, its use of irony, its interest in evil, worried Plato. But the very ambiguity and voracious ubiquitousness of art is its characteristic freedom. Art, especially literature, is a great hall of reflection where we can all meet and where everything under the sun can be examined and considered."

*Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. 

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

Imperfection and Love - After Reading Plato, Again

Imperfection and Love

Over the holidays I have been reading a bit of Plato again, mainly out of a spontaneous need for clarification of what LOVE might be. Mostly I indulged into the Symposium. And then I moved on to a contemporary academic female voice: Martha Nussbaum, who, in Upheavals of Thought (2001), criticizes Plato’s account for its focus on perfection.

The non-sexual, purely intellectual relationship that we understand as ‘Platonic love’ is quite distinct from the account we get in Plato’s works, which are predominantly focused on a striving for perfection through beauty. Modern everyday understandings of personal love, ranging from motherly, sibling, family to romantic love, are quite different.

Plato seems to regard all information gained through our bodily senses as being potentially corruptive to the soul. And seems to be very much in favour of a life led in abstinence of sensual pleasure. The “true philosopher“ should aspire to higher ideals, as far away as possible from the body. When I first read Plato I was quite surprised to find this (in my view) very puritanical line of thought, anchored in a time 2000 years ago. I thought only Christianity had brought this about.

The negation and avoidance of sensual input seems to me a significant error and even a betrayal on our bodies, the true, grand and only instrument given to us with which we are able to feel, explore, discover and simply live life. 

Sensual input, pleasure, eros, emotion, love  - they all are only possible through and with this body and seem to me to be at the root of every human thought and deed. 

Plato seems to be all for perfection. If one really loves life, though, then one has to incorporate, accept and yes: love, imperfection, too. Simply because it is also part of this life and plays an essential role: the sensitization towards perfection.

I am much in favour of values like reason and logic, pure thought. They help us sometimes to understand the complexities of life. But they should be used together with the emotional, sometimes even, irrational insights our bodies can give us. Just think of how much more insight and the feeling of understanding a simple embrace can give.

Erotic love or eros can be a very good mediator and guide towards the ultimate goal, the perfect being, that connects with the eternal and thus allows us, who are mortal, to somehow become immortal. Eros is the lust for possession and can lead to a more general lust for possession of knowledge, beauty or philosophy and thus aims at transcending mankind’s existence.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

. 

A Book Beginning I Always Adored

A Book Beginning I Always Adored:

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky. The train pulled up at a signal stop. 

(from Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata)

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

‘I Knew’ - poem

I Knew

Peeling off like wet skin 

from a wound you inflicted. 

You had to, didn’t you?

You couldn’t just pass me by,

harming me in not noticing,

harming me in not harming me?

I still feel wet sometimes,

the lost, translucent wetness that I liked 

so much, then,

when you and - was it really me?

put arms and limbs and 

milky threads around our web

of homeless clouds.

I flew then, I knew, how.

I sank then, under the bow

of our boat, so lovely,

so full, so achingly brave,

so far away, so remote now.

I drank then, I gulped then,

I breathed then, I knew.

                      Robert Faeth

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

‘Animals’ - poem

Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate

and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time

but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves

and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal

we didn't need speedometers

we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster

or greener than now if you were with me O you

were the best of all may days

                               Frank O'Hara (1926 - 1966))*

 

*Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School, informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting and contemporary avant-garde movements.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

Books: My favourite 16 books this year

My favourite 16 books this year:

Now that the year is ending the time has come to reminisce a little.

Here is my very own best book list of this year: 

“Leaving the Atocha Station“ by Ben Lerner

“Normal People“ by Sally Rooney

“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous“ by Ocean Vuong

“The Vegetarian“ by Han Kang“

“The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood

“Lanny“ by Max Porter

“The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard

“Less” by Andrew Sean Greer

“The Last Gentleman“ by Walker Percy

“The Sea” by John Banville

“As A Friend“ by Forrest Gander

“The Man Without a Shadow“ by Joyce Carol Oates

“Of Human Bondage“ by W. Somerset Maugham

“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie“ by Muriel Spark

“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont“ by Elizabeth Taylor

“A Little Life“ by Hanya Yanagihara

“Leaving the Atocha Station“ by Ben Lerner:

This is a young American‘s tale of his alienated descent into Spain. In a constantly distorting mirror Adam is visiting the Prado and stands in front of Roger van der Weyden's “Descent from the Cross“, hoping for "a profound experience of art" that never takes place: "The closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity." 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, very intelligent and unusual. It also introduced me to Ben Lerner, his other 2 novels (“10:04” and “The Topeka School”) and his poetry books.

“Normal People“ by Sally Rooney:

Feel like delving into more of relationship’s arduous, bittersweet dramas?

Here comes "Normal People" by Sally Rooney. An exploration of Young Adult first, intense love across social classes in contemporary Ireland. The energy and excitement of the story comes from the the inner lives of the couple, what they see, imagine, read, from their sensibilities. - Enjoyed it very much!

"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous“ by Ocean Vuong::

Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original – poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a gripping and shattering portrait of a family. 

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. 

In his late twenties, the narrator, Little Dog, starts a letter to his mother, telling all he was not able to tell so far and reveals the history of a family which began before he was born, in Vietnam.

it is a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity, asking central questions of our time, immersed as it is in addiction, violence, and trauma. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the bitterness of not being heard.  How to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, this powers this brilliant novel. - Beautiful, emotional, honest!

"The Vegetarian“ by Han Kang:

Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and body and renounce eating meat. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms. Scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. 

In sensual and violent images the book tells of the disturbing changing of Yeong-hye. The book shifts in language, moving between the baffled irritation of the husbands first-person narration, the controlled prose of the sister’s world, the dark and bloody narrative of Yeong-hye’s dreams, and the seductively sensual descriptions of living bodies painted with flowers, in states of transformation or wasting away. - Loved it, especially the tale of the artist, Yeong-hye his muse, he her lover!

"The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood:

A delightful and cunning novel in a novel in a novel. Here Atwood sketches, with fascinating mastery of period detail, of costume and setting, of landscape and sky, of odor and texture, of mood and voice and dark humor, the story of the sisters Iris and Laura and their coming-of-age between the world wars in Canada. A book full of life’s dramas and cruel jokes, philosophical, wise, observant, mesmerizing. -  One of the best books I’ve read in the last 2 years, one that deserves to be called ‘Good Literature’. A marvel!

"Lanny" by Max Porter:

In this short novel Max Porter, in an exciting, experimental way, merges poetry and prose with beautiful, mesmerizing results. Lanny, a sweet, dreamy, strange and otherworldly, nevertheless lively, charming  boy, whom everyone likes, goes missing one evening in his English village, 150 km from London. 

The police suspect an 80-year old local artist, who, living an isolated life, has struck up an unusual friendship with Lanny. The small-minded villagers cannot accept that an old man can simply be friends with a young boy, and assume Pete must be a paedophile and, now, a murderer.  -  

Lanny is a wonderfully gripping, suspenseful, touching novel. Highly recommend!

7. "The Maytrees" by Annie Dillard:

In elegantly sophisticated, spare prose, Dillard tells the tale of the Maytree family, a tale of love, extraordinary friendship and maturity, a tale of intimacy and loss, against a background of the vastness of nature in province town Cape Cod. - A moving, intelligent, warm and hopeful novel!

"Less" by Andrew Sean Greer:

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Arthur Less, a struggling minor novelist, middle-aged, finds himself all of a sudden single again after the young man with whom he spent the last 9 years suddenly announces his engagement to someone else. 

To avoid his ex’s wedding, Arthur embarks on a world-tour which develops into a funny, tragicomical journey with a parade of colourful characters and a voyage of self-discovery.   -  Funny, witty and rewarding!

“The Last Gentleman" by Walker Percy:

A jaded young man embarks on a journey of self-discovery with the help of an unusual family. 

After moving from his native South to New York City, Will Barrett‘a most meaningful human connections come through the lens of a telescope in Central Park, from which he views the comings and goings of the eccentric Vaught family. 

He meets the Vaught patriarch and accepts a job in the Mississippi Delta as caretaker for the family's ailing son, Jamie. Once there, he is confronted not only by his personal demons, but also his growing love for Jamie's sister, Kitty, and a deepening relationship with the Vaught family that will teach him the true meaning of home. - Walker Percy deserves to be read more and be republished!

“The Sea” by John Banville:

In this brilliant, Man Booker Prize winning novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who returns to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-off family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. - 

Gorgeously written novel - a true Banville! Psychologically dense, full of insight, with an almost painterly use of prose!

 "As a Friend" by Forrest Gander:

At 106 pages, it is a short book. Yet its shortness is an asset, lending the book the same shifty qualities as its subject, the doomed, magnetic Les. 

Les is a young poet and surveyor whose intensity and brilliance stands out among the residents of this remote Arkansas town. Les tries to live a nineteenth-century devotion to friendship with a 1970s approach to monogamy, with devastating results.

A beautiful, touching book about friendship and loss, love and hurt!

"The Man Without a Shadow" by Joyce Carol Oates:

An astounding psychological thriller that develops into an examination of the ways in which we define ourselves in terms of relationship, work, exploitation, ethics and morals.

Margot, a young neuropsychologist, is drawn to Eli, one of her case studies, a handsome man who, for various reasons, is unable to retain memories or new information for more than 70 seconds and so is trapped in perpetual presence and haunted by an image from childhood of a girl’s body floating in a lake. Over 3 decades her fascination with Eli deepens and begins to stray into unethical, obsessive, territory and builds up to a disturbing, heart-rending climax.

A true J. C. Oates, it examines the nature of passion, affection and, above all, the loneliness that permeates even the longest and most intimate relationships.

"Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham:

In this modern classic the life of Philip, an orphaned boy, hungry for love and experience, a young person coming of age, unfolds. It is and is not a Bildungsroman (yes, for the protagonist’s increasing intellect, and no, for the final decision he makes) and it is clearly one of the best in its gripping storytelling, its minute dissection of the limitations of individual freedom, its insight in the emotional and why we do things and hurt others when we don’t really want to. -  A true masterpiece of the 20th Century!

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie“ by Muriel Spark:

A masterpiece of narration, a Scots classic from 1960. A light, short and bittersweet read with dialogues full of Scottish wit. It was adapted 1969 into an Academy Award–winning film starring Maggie Smith.

The novel is set in 1930s Edinburgh and follows the downfall of Miss Brodie, an eccentric, matriarchal, romantic and lonely teacher „in her prime“ at a girls’ school, who manipulatively cultivates the minds and morals of a select handful of pupils, the so-called Brodie set.  - Light, profound and tragicomical!

"Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont“ by Elizabeth Taylor:

(a book by Elizabeth Taylor: No, not the actress but the British author who died in 1975 and who is just being recognized again and which made it onto the list of the 100 best books.)

One rainy Sunday in January Mrs. Palfrey, a widowed „tall woman with big bones and a noble face, who sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag“, arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Here she meets the other residents and it is with sharp wit and exquisite subtlety, teetering on the edge of a sitcom, that Taylor depicts them and their relationships. 

This is a very “British“ book in the ever present humor which deals lightly even with the sombre tunes of a life coming to a close, very touching!

“A Little Life“ by Hanya Yanagihara:

It may be dark and traumatic, and it was published in 2016, but it is one of the most moving books I’ve read in the last years, it is heart-wrenching, gripping, at times unbearably sad and yet so full of love, beauty, compassion and friendship. 

Four young college friends move to New York to incredibly successful careers: as an artist, architect, actor, and Jude as a litigator. The story focuses on Jude: broken, full of secrets, his body a web of scar tissue.

Yanagihara shows how queerness can still be an act of extreme shame that suffers in silence and self-destruction. The soothing balm to all that suffering and anxiety is friendship.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #paintings, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover,

‘The Octopus Museum’ by Brenda Shaughenessy - review

“The Octopus Museum” by Brenda Shaughenessy:

A recommendation for the holidays, easy to read, short, hypnotic, sometimes unsettling, this book, partly science-fiction, partly reality, takes you into an alternate world where, because of man's shortcomings, cephalopods rule the earth now. Full of feminist ideas, humor, the anxieties of a mother, these poems are poetic brain fodder as well as entertainment.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #paintings, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,

Reflection on Variations and Diversity

Reflection on Variations and Diversity:

“The reflection of her here, and then there, 

  Is another shadow, another evasion, 

  Another denial. If she is everywhere, 

  She is nowhere, to him.“ ...

 from "Bouquet of Belle Scavoir”, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

 

Some of my painterly work consists of variations, meaning that I settle on 1 motif, 1 composition and then execute these in different aspects of colour and expression. 

This is not a new procedure. Variations on the same base motif have been common throughout all of art’s history. 

For example Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous and wonderful “Goldberg Variations“, composed in 1742 as the fourth and last of his „Clavierübungen“. With them he masterly concluded a long musical tradition of his time, the „Variation“, meaning executing and performing around and upon a central musical model, leitmotif or base theme. The Goldberg Variations start with an introductive Aria and then, over the course of 30 variations in all moods, colours, tempi and tonal modulations, again conclude with it, the Aria being technically the same as the one with which everything started, but nevertheless somehow changed through the experience the listener/performer was put through during the cycle.

Claude Monet, famous impressionistic painter, used the same method to show different aspects of one motif (haystacks for example) in painting them at different times of the day, early morning, noon, afternoon, sundown.

In these examples the motif in its role as a giver of meaning moves to the background to allow other properties and aspects to come to the fore. In the case of Monet’s haystacks not the haystack itself is of importance, it rather serves as a projection screen of different moods and temperaments evoked by the changing light of day thrown on it. The same goes for Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Variations, while at first glance might seem repetitive or redundant, teach us to recognize the abounding diversity, the endless and plentiful variety in life and art likewise. 

There is never only 1 model of something, be it a flower, an animal or a simple bacteria. Not one species is like the other, and within one species not one individual is the same. That is what variation means, the playing out of all the possibilities which lie hidden in one form.

This is also one of the main keys of life’s survival. Be diverse, be playful, be ready to adapt. Only through adaptation there will be survival and endurance against all odds. This might be one of life’s greatest achievements and is something truly to be admired and be perplexed about. Variations are a guarantor of survival, standstill in the long run means extinction. 

This principle of variety, of diversity, is so deeply ingrained in all things alive that it transcends into society, culture and art.

Hence my affinity to variations. They offer much freedom and diversity.

There once was this idea of “The Original“ in art, meaning that an artwork, produced by the artist, existed only in one and one only execution, namely the painting or sculpture you had in front of you. A lot of value, monetary and ideologically, was attached to this idea of originality.

Then, for the first time in man’s artistic endeavor, with the industrial revolution came serial reproduction. Photography allowed copies of one picture and all of a sudden a work of art could be reproduced, in minute detail, as to be almost indistinguishable from the “original“. - The idea of what is original had to be redefined and altered.

Our times do not stand still, times never do. And so, after the industrial revolution and serial reproduction came the time of quantum physics and with it the great revelation that one thing truly can exist in more than one execution (actually it exists in all possible and imaginable forms) and in different locations all at the same time. This came to be known as "Superposition", the coexistence of distinct phenomena as part of the same event.

Imagine yourself in possession of a clever, cunningly constructed device, some sort of micro-macro-tele-time-O-scope. Wich would enable you, by simply turning some wheels or pulling some levers, to see some-thing, some-body, any-thing in all its variety, all its changing, endless forms, appearances and expressions through time, from start to end, all states of probability viewable. Then you would have a very good impression of its essence, its true being.  

Variations are, in a way, manifestations or expressions of superimposed states of being.

So, to get back where I started, with that line of W. Stevens’:

“The reflection of her here, and then there, 

  Is another shadow, another evasion, 

  Another denial. If she is everywhere, 

  She is nowhere, to him.“  …

As beautiful as I find these lines, and as much as I do understand the feeling, I have to disagree with the conclusion. If she is everywhere she is there in all possible variations. She is there, for him, after all. He only needs to look closely.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry,