/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16802541]

When judging a piece of art, which frame of mind is best? I have been emotionally moved by pieces of literature before, and often I felt my rationality trying to counter that by pointing out the flaws and other technical shortcomings of the work. My main concern is, if a piece of art is able to evoke strong emotions in us, does that overcome whatever conclusions a thoughtful analysis would give us? Should we judge art, so to speak, with the heart, or the mind? What takes priority?

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDYYIIins No.16803635]

THE OPTIMAL ARTIFACT HAS THREE DIMENSIONS: (I) EMOTIONAL OR SENSIBLE, (II) RATIONAL OR INTELLIGIBLE, (III) ETHICOMORAL OR CHARACTERIZABLE.

BEING SENSIBLE, INTELLIGIBLE, AND CHARACTERIZABLE, THE OPTIMAL ARTIFACT SHOULD BE SENSED, JUDGED, AND VALUATED.

IF THE ARTIFACT LACKS SENSIBILITY, OR INTELLIGIBILITY, OR CHARACTERIZABLITY, IT IS SUBOPTIMAL ART; IF IT IS HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY MADE UGLY, AND/OR IRRATIONAL, AND/OR VICIOUS, IT CONSTITUTES ANTIART.

[Anonymous No.16804677]

The highest art rarely distinguishes in this way. A strong sense of feeling may be tied to the highest laws, or simply one's character. And in a similar way the analysis may search for the highest forms within the work or drift off into its own craft. This is what leads to the "cultivation of personality", to criticism which is little more than a building of one's own philosophy in place of metaphysical laws, to the artistic movements which can only endure so long as they grasp for the highest and the art in itself is revealed in exhaustion. In the end pure feeling and reason lead to the same thing, a black square, a room without a window, the pantheism of theory divided from the world.

Ideally the work of art is tied in with greater laws, as is the case with all of the Greek works. It should be obvious, yet this is often neglected, people search out the meaning of art as if it could be detached from its world, or simply as it may be used for our own era. Rather than an artifact or museum piece the work was intimately tied to the festival, a part of the whole, which was in turn a means of sacrifice, contest, transition, resurrection of law, and the metamorphosis of pollution into wealth (rather than simple removal or even absolution). What would the ancient form of war be without the stripping of armour and its dedication to Athena? It is only through her that the dead may begin their journey home, that the armour be returned to the wealth of nature, and the body given over to a new territory of law. Within the contest the underworld begins to rise amidst the contested borders, and this only intensifies the fight - the violence of the law forms behind the line of men, and the dead must be given a piece of the coming victory, of the shifting of the earth itself. This is beyond art, and appears as a spontaneous irruption of law, of the violence of law and the gods causing the metamorphosis of man. Art only appears as a weakening of this, of the historic moment and the loss of a sense of time that distinguishes the world from its origins. One senses that creation has ended, and now it is up to him - hence the want of heroism within art, which can never be fulfilled.

[Anonymous No.16804703]

>>16804677
Plato reminds us of the ages of art. Epic, didactic, and lyric poetry are the dominion of old men: one who has not recognised these forms as the highest at the end of his life must be blind to the law. There is also a sense of death in this, which may be the source of Nietzsche's protest. One is handed over to memory, to the need of alcohol as a law of remembrance, but in this there is also a seasonal wealth, of giving oneself over to the Graces and Hours as well as the Muses. As in death one is returned to the highest dominion through art, and even in peace the rule of war and plunder remains. In the spoils of war one begins to recognise the greatest incursions of wealth, and in the contest of despoiling one gives himself completely to the highest violence - in fate one's armour can only be equal to the enemy's weapon or the highest laws. Without this there could be no fighting on the territory of the gods. Our wars are of the same laws, only the direction and intensity shifts, a matter of degrees, the perception and character weakened. In another sense, the violence of material intensifies as a defense against the rising of the underworld, and in peace the violence of wealth may only be deepened. Despoiling incurs upon the territory of law rather than being of it.

Holderlin discusses heroic art in relation to the character types, what draws upon status and friendship through a sense of power and wealth - he who is of the highest but may isolate others, even himself, and he who is surrounded by love of the simple, the lowest. One may also extend this to an understanding of time, the character of entire eras. Here even the highest art may begin to reveal weaknesses. In Odysseus the counting up of innumerable coins, and in Achilles the unleashing of boundless gold, a Midas figure. But is it not that each would be nothing on his own? The myth of Midas may be read in two ways, is this not so with Odysseus and Achilles? The cunning which allows slow stripping of wealth is also of the law of Midas, one who takes without taking may be his equal, one who wields the ring of Gyges and gives mysterious wealth, an Autolycus or another untold hero of Hermes.

[Anonymous No.16804763]

>>16804703
For the Greeks the mechanistic often led to madness through a specific grading, the two forms wandering to meet, as in the myth of Marsyas. Athena discards that which he will stumble upon and then use to best the gods, and so metamorphose. In the chant, the meter of oracles, the petrified movement of the statues we see this metamorphosis of skilled material. The poetic and reason should be understood as incurring dominions, that which clashes and wears upon the other to reveal its formation within law. What is the beautiful shield if it is not tested in battle and scarred by the opponent's spear? A simple object without any dominion of wealth. In art the method can only be a means of illumination, of highlighting periods of transition and boundaries of law, carving out from within the material what is already there. The artist only sees this process before him, and must act on behalf of the law to give it life and death through the creation. Marsyas is skinned in his metamorphosis, an act of becoming and the hidden wealth that bestows the godlike from the unknown, the violence of nature as the wellspring of art.

https://youtu.be/lS12KiVV32Q

[Anonymous No.16804839]

The highest art may appear in the impoverished era, but it is proscribed by the law of being, hence the retreat of great men into decadence and fantastical politics, until the final spirits are diminished. The being of wealth serves as a cruelty upon memory, a curse, and begs of return to criminality. One begins to tear away at the shell to reveal something uglier. By contrast, a wealth of being may allow for the crude, the brutal, of theft and even the lowest violence so long as it does not threaten the source from which it springs. "O tua mentula mentula mentula mentula mentula mentula mentula mentula!" Even the graffiti of Rome takes on a noble appearance compared to much of the aristocratic art of decline - where the law illuminates the shadows wealth pours out in justice and vengeance from the underworld. "Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores."
The tedious appearance of the aristocracy without law is that of magpies pecking one another in place of a cow. This is something lower than class concerns, and is grasped where one begins to see the modern art form as beyond Aristotle's poles of beast and god. Reason and the poetic are of a similar distance, and only come to prominence where not only law is diminished but art itself. Their hardening is of a desperation to preserve historicity against the laws of time.