Aesthetics are not an Absolute

Aesthetics are not an Absolute:

This picture shows a painting by Jean Siméon Chardin, the 18th century French painter (1699-1779), considered to be a master of still life. Carefully balanced compositions, soft diffusion of light and granular impasto characterize his work.

I first encountered this painting on a CD-cover of a selection of piano pieces by Jean-Philippe Rameau, performed by Tzimon Barto "A Basket full of Wild Strawberries", a jewel in its own (2005). It is also the title of the painting " Le panier de fraise des bois".

I have always admired this lovely still life, its composition with the abundant redness of the strawberries, the contrasting white flowers in the front and the delicate transparency of the glass of water.

And yesterday I showed it to a friend who immediately took to the picture, too, but had one small critique to offer. To him the glass of water seemed like any ordinary water glass and not appropriate to accompany the erotic, sensual exclusivity of the strawberries. He suggested a metal beaker on another of Chardin's paintings to go with it. 

While I couldn't find any fault in the composition it nevertheless kept me pondering on if and how much aesthetics are influenced by the values of the society we are part of.

Aesthetics are not an absolute, they are prone to change like everything else man-made and respond to the zeitgeist and the general agreement on value. In this case I remembered that back then, in about 1750, there must have been a different value accorded to glass than today, simply because the production was by far harder. So in that time this water glass was most definitively considered to be something of value, something exclusive and therefore quite fitted to go with the exclusivity of the delicious strawberries. A metal or even gold beaker would have worked well, too - probably. But I think Chardin, who is said to have been quite a humble person, chose the water glass instead, most likely because of its unobtrusive and ephemeral exclusivity.

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Music and Memory

Music and Memory:

For the last 2 weeks, out of over 9.500 titles, I have been editing and completing a music playlist for streaming purposes, one for classical music and one for Jazz. 

All my favorites, one after the other, continuously playing in an endless, uninterrupted stream: the joys of modern life, somehow always new, always exciting, thanks to random-mix mode. 

And thanks to this accomplishment I am rediscovering music I had not heard for ages, music which quietly went into oblivion on my cd-shelf, music I forgot the existence of, music I had lost myself in, music I would have metaphorically died for, music I thought I couldn’t live without and then forgot, music strongly attached to situations, events, people, episodes and phases in my life. 

Now, under a downy warm blanket, I lie on my couch and listen again to sounds almost forgotten. Mahler’s 9th, for example, the last slow, 25 minutes long, movement with its heartrending climaxes and its long, almost unbearably bittersweet fading out of this world. So many memories go with it, so many emotions and ghosts rise up from the depth of the past. 

Different times, different ages, they all are still there and even though I knew they were, was aware those memories must still exist somewhere, must still be encrypted in my brain, now, with the help of this music, they are as easy accessible as if they happened only yesterday. This is, among other spells, the magic that music is capable of. Music creates markers in the memory encrypting process. As do other strong tools: taste, smell, touch. Or color. 

It seems our brain uses our fundamental senses to help memorize, store, anchor and retrieve events by simply attaching sensations to them. 

Bartok is coupled with The Shining and early adolescence,  Ligeti’s Requiem with Space Odyssey and a very curious 12 year-old self and a certain person. The Preludes by Debussy make me think of, relive, re-feel, my moods, my joys, my despairs of a time in Nuremberg; Rameau, Satie and Mompou bring back a specific phase in Berlin (as does David Bowie), Bach makes a lost, dear dead friend return, Poulenc recreates the moment of a significant artistic insight. 

This is how I imagine and wish for, old age could be, the long afternoon of my evening of life. Given that I then will still have the necessary mental capacities, this is not an unattractive outlook. Recline on your couch, simply turn on the music and let your life pass by. It’s not them but me who plays “Our Song”!

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‘Identity’ - poem

Identity

When Hans Hofmann became a hedgehog

somewhere in a Germany that has

vanished with its forests and hedgerows

Shakespeare would have been a young actor

starting out in a country that was

only a word to Hans who had learned

from those who had painted animals

only from hearing tales about them

without ever setting eyes on them

or from corpses with the lingering

light mute and deathly still forever

held fast in the fur or the feathers

hanging or lying on a table

and he had learned from others who had

arranged the corpses of animals

as though they were still alive in full

flight or on their way but this hedgehog

was there in the same life as his own 

looking around at him with his brush

of camel hair and his stretched

parchment of sheepskin as he turned to each sharp

particular quill and every black

whisker on the long live snout and those

flat clawed feet made only for trundling

and for feeling along the dark undersides

of stones and as Hans took them in he

turned into the Hans that we would see

                                    W. S. Merwin (1927 - 2019)*

*William Stanley Merwin (1927 – 2019) was an American poet and translator who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and received twice the Pulitzer Prize.

*Hans Hoffmann was a German painter (1530-1591)

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“The Tremor of Forgery” by Patricia Highsmith - review

“The Tremor of Forgery” by Patricia Highsmith:

Recently, in search of a light read which would get me over the first, always dreary, days of January, I was recommended a book by Patricia Highsmith, “The Tremor of Forgery“, published first in the UK in 1969.

I was of the impression up until then that I had read all the books by Highsmith, even if that was a long time, decades, ago. Well, I was wrong, this one I had not read. And what a pleasant surprise it was.

Patricia Highsmith, American crime novelist (1921-1995) was by far more famous outside of the USA. And this did not change even after her novel “Strangers on a Train“ was bought and adapted for cinema by Alfred Hitchcock.

Her most famous figure could well be the talented Mr. Tom Ripley, to whom she dedicated 5 books alone. The first of the series was also made into a film, at least twice, one featuring Alain Delon in “Plein soleil“ by René Clement in 1960, and recently Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley“ by Anthony Minghella from 1999.

The Tremor of Forgery marks somehow a departure from its predecessors as it is playing much more on the internal life of its protagonist, tells the story solely from the perspective of one single character. It is often considered to be her best novel, even Graham Greene gave it high praise. 

It tells of Howard Ingham, an American writer, who travels to Tunisia in order to meet and work with a friend on a screenplay. The friend never shows up, having committed suicide and Ingham, shaken by this news, resolves to write his next novel instead on site and stays. He gets sucked into the strangely different life of Tunisia, observing the Tunisian society around him, reflecting on its attitudes and how he feels about those cultural differences. 

He meets and befriends another American, a strange bigot character, and a friendly, lonely, gay Dane with a dog, who is a painter.

He ponders his own sexuality, deliberating on his latent homosexual tendencies whilst also embarking on a brief fling with a young woman. He even questions the very nature of his existence.

In following his thoughts or his conversations on a variety of topics with his friends it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. And there are mysteries at the heart of the story.

There's a hint of espionage with the American friend, there is the incident of an attempted break-in at Ingham's hotel bungalow, during which Ingham throws his typewriter in defence against the intruder; thereafter he is haunted by the notion that he might have killed the man.

All the while he waits for news of his girlfriend who later comes to visit him and tells him she has had an affair with his suicidal friend and was the reason for his killing himself.

On first perception the novel might seem uneventful but, as with almost every Highsmith novel, it grows on you in suspense and psychological drama. The true complexity and the depth of this novel come from the questions of morality and crime and how they can become relative in a given situation, forcing one to rethink well-trodden paths.

*Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psyhological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels novels and numerous sshort stories.

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‘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

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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. 

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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.

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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)

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‘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

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‘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.

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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.

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