On Monday morning I woke up at 5:13. When I reset the clock the night before I must have accidentally turned the alarm off. But I rushed through yoga and got caught up to my usual schedule by the time I was done. It's not very yogic though and I don't like hurrying because it makes me nervous.
I finished transcribing the lyrics for "Quand ça balance" (When I'm Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg from the website I'd found yesterday and translated the first three verses.
I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast.
I took a siesta from 11:17 to 12:47.
I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch.
This was the eleventh day of my fourteen day fast and so once again I had a tomato and two avocados with lime juice for lunch.
I took a bike ride in the afternoon to Ossington and Bloor. On the way back my back wheel started dragging against one side of the frame. I loosened the bolt, moved it back to the centre and tightened it again but as soon as I started riding it did it again. I fixed it again and the same thing happened. Finally I loosened it and pushed the wheel all the way against the other side of the frame and tightened it there. This time when it snapped back it stayed pretty much in the centre and I was able to ride home with no problem.
I continued with my fourth reading of Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic As Artist” to look for quotes to help with my essay. There’s lots of juicy stuff there but not so much to support my argument. I’ll find most of what I’m looking for when I re-read his “The Decay of Lying”.
I laid down for a siesta at 17:15 but couldn’t sleep and so I just rested with the intention of getting up in half an hour if I didn’t fall to sleep. But after twenty minutes I remembered to post my blog and so I got up to do that.
I ate two mangoes and then went online to check for this week’s Brit Lit 2 lecture. It was up.
This lecture is titled “Aesthetic Education” and it’s on Oscar Wilde.
Last third of term. 20th Century and 21st.
Oscar Wilde's The Critic As Artist and The Decay of Lying. Forster's The Machine Stops was left for tutorial. Written in 20th. Short story form. About machines, industry, modernization and the future.
Oscar Wilde was part of the movement of artists who promoted a new theory of art at the end of the 19th Century. It was against dominant theories of the era. The main tenet of this theory is that art has value in and of itself. In this it rebelled against the conventional view that art should usefully promote morals and values. Though “The Critic As Artist” is directly about criticism, its treatment of the topic reveals the theory of art for art’s sake.
It is by talking about criticism as art that we get a sense of its values. The essay is presented in a Socratic dialogue, which is about taking someone from ignorance to knowledge. Socrates is always talking to one person who sets him up. Ernest represents the conventional view. Gilbert articulates his view showing how the conventional view is wrong. Ernest eventually agrees to each argument. The dialogue itself is a form of aesthetic education. Ernest is learning as we should.
Part one overturns the conventional view of the critic by positing a new theory of art. What the critic should be. Part two elaborates what qualities, talents, skills and consequences are specifically required of this new mode of aesthetic education.
Part one begins with the definition of criticism. Here Ernest gives us key ideas that need to be challenged. That criticism is inferior to art, is reviewing, just an external act of judgement and evaluation, and therefore separate from art. That art creates a perfected moment and the critic is only judging and not creating.
But Gilbert says no. The people who write for the six penny papers are reviewers. Gilbert turns what Ernest says in reverse. The critic is more cultivated than the artist. Criticism is the critical spirit and that is more demanding.
The rest of the dialogue articulates the meaning of the critical spirit. In articulating the critical spirit he redefines art and at the same time redefines criticism. “Speaking about a thing is more difficult than doing a thing.” Key idea. “Doing nothing is hard.” “Art is immoral.” “Art criticism is more creative.” “Judgement is about experience.” The critic should be unfair, insincere, and irrational.
The difficult thing is description. Taking accidents and making a meaningful story is a true challenge. Life is absurd and random and chaotic and to make sense of it is more difficult than giving in to senselessness.
Ernest asks isn’t then the critic below the poet? What is left for the critic to do? If art’s point is imitation and resemblance the critic is secondary. But the critic stands in the same relation to creation as the artist. Both are creators. Art is not judged on the standard of resemblance.
This is very different from George Eliot’s idea of art and other ideas in that period. A crucial passage is where Gilbert claims that criticism is art. Where the artist attempts to give form and voice to the visible world like Homer the critic stands in the same relation. Both are taking something from the world and giving it meaning it doesn’t have. The idea that art imitates is trashed. It is not how well art represents the world that gives it value but how it gives expression to meaninglessness and gives it form. Criticism does the same. It creates something new.
This was a massive change in aesthetic theory. George Eliot said it was evil for a novelist to misrepresent the world. She wants accuracy and imitation. She says art tells us about the world. But Wilde says the artist and critic are creative and independent. Art tells us about the self. Ultimately Eliot hints at how the self operates when she talks about the broken mirror. Seeing what’s in the mirror of one’s own mind. So there is an expression of the function of the soul and self in Eliot but it is not foregrounded. Wilde does end up talking about the relation of the art critic to the world. Eliot is not about the world only and Wilde is not about the self only. There is difference of emphasis. Eliot emphasized a more productive profitable useful idea of art while Wilde articulated art and criticism as antithetical to use.
The value of art is uselessness. The most extreme expression is that life is less than art which is less than criticism. Criticism is the most abstract, the most general and therefore the best way to understand the world. Good criticism works with materials that is art. A crucial idea is that criticism is better because art is only one step away from life. Art makes considerations of probability, concessions to the tediousness of public and domestic life. There is a sense that art that represents the world must remain plausible and connected to the world. We would view this differently today.
Art remains more closely connected to the world than criticism needs to. Criticism is two steps away from the world. With art one can always appeal to fact. Criticism expresses the critic’s experience of art. Gilbert is against seeing the object as it is. Criticism is the encounter between the critic and the art object. That is what it expresses. A personal subjective encounter with beauty in the form of art. Art as object form of beauty is not expressive. It is impressive.
Criticism repeats the same effect that the art had on the critic projected to the reader. When one reads a novel or poem one has experience with that work. That intellectual, emotion, and physical goal of criticism is to bring the reader into the same experience of what it is like to encounter that work of beauty.
It can’t be perfectly done and that’s why it is subjective and impressive. The professor is trying to express his experience of what Wilde is doing You can’t know his experience and he can’t convey it perfectly but he’s trying to impress the experience intellectually, emotionally and physically. Art is an occasion for the creation of something new and beautiful that makes an impression on the soul. It is not about resemblance or accuracy but about beauty and how well it is expressed.
Art and criticism are subjective. Sounds great. It’s all about me and expressing my own encounter. But actually it makes the work of reading and criticism more demanding. The standards are the same as for the artist. Not just whatever it means to me but I have to make you understand what it means to me. It is difficult to share one’s personal experience of a work of art. One can’t just tell the truth. It is not a report. If it was a report it would be easy. It’s demanding and requires a lot and is as hard to do as art. Inviting the reader to have an impressive experience of art.
The work of the critic is the creation of a new beautiful form that makes an impression on the soul. Its standard is not truth but beauty. The critic must rise to the same level as artist. When the artist trying to express something about the world the critic is an artists creating new art about art.
How does this work? The value of aesthetic education. A guide to the essay. The point of aesthetic education is not about facts or what means but to cultivate a temperament that lets us engage with art to prepare for beauty. What do we need to prepare for beauty? Give up conventional ideas about what you think the artist is doing when you see art. As beauty is also what art is telling us about the world.
Ernest asks what happens to interpretation. If criticism is about the self (creative and independent) wouldn’t it become horribly un-rigorous and detached from reality? Criticism is still about interpretation. Criticism doesn’t answer the text but draws attention to its mysteries. It ends our ease and shakes us out of what we think we know. It does this by intensifying personality. It deepens mysteries.
The critic resembles the artist. The artist gives a personalized world through their eyes. It is true because it is consistent with how the artist sees the world. Truth is fidelity to one’s experience. The critic does the same with art. For criticism to be true the critic must make their personality as clear and intense as possible. Sense that this is my interpretation of this world of art. What it means to me is inflected by my personal feelings and experiences and everything about me that goes into that encounter. It tells the truth about my personal experience. If we try to take personal experience away it won’t work because we always encounter art in personal experience. If we pretend to be objective we are lying and concealing what must be there.
To write criticism one must acknowledge the personal. Making personality part of it makes it more true. Pretending it is not personality is what Wilde is against. The critic is experiencing the work in new way. The critic does not explain but articulates a revelation about what that art revealed to them. Wilde acknowledges art is not separate from the world.
When the critic interprets Tennyson’s interpretation of Homer he reveals that work of art in relation to his age. Art changes every time we encounter it. Every critic encounters it differently because the critic and world has changed. What art means changes because of when we encountered it. We can’t know what it is like to read Tennyson when it was written. That is not the goal. What does it mean now? What I get from it.
The critic’s experience is inescapably social and political. But without being didactic. Without being useful by telling us what to do or how to live. Art has a special capacity to shelter us from reality. We encounter art in our age but the function of art is to shelter or distance us against the perils of our existence. The kind of grief we feel in art is not ours. That distance allows us to reflect and become our best selves.
Art is immoral but what does this mean? It is immoral because it doesn’t tell us what to do and shelters us from the world. Often assumed that art decadent or wrong or evil. Immorality is not about decadence . Art is anti profitability. It encourages nothing. It does nothing. Art’s uselessness makes it immoral but makes it valuable for us. The aim of life is to do. The dreamer is not forgiven like the criminal because they are not useful. Art excites emotions that do nothing and that’s the magic of art. Uselessness is why the critic must create. If the critic makes art useful it perverts the purpose. The critic is keeping sterile beauty going.
To do nothing is not just sitting. It is to be not useful and to contemplate. This is difficult. The true critic bears witness within contemplation and doesn’t cut off any thought or feeling. The true critic is different. Contemplation can’t be a productive end. We don’t want the critic to give voice to a generation but to carry it into the future to the next artist and next critic.
A philistine is a common person who only cares about profit and use and who hates impracticality. It is hard to be impractical. It is even hard to find metaphors for and examples of unpracticality because everything has been turned to use and value in our world. There is a distinction between knowing life and being useful. To know life, to contemplate, to be separate, to find shelter in art, to have knowledge of life. Practical action is not knowing.
What are the qualities we should cultivate in students? This powerful idea about criticism. Not objectivity but surrendering to a work to gain its secret. Not accepting everything that happens in a work. We don’t have to let Ulysses’ message dominate us. Once we surrender we see tensions, complications and problems. It means we attempt to climb on the shoulders of writer and see the world through the writer's eyes. Fra Lippo Lippi says art loves the world more than god. To love the world in this ridiculous way goes against reason. The world is violent, absurd and difficult to love. Making art that loves the world and expresses beauty is irrational. The rational approach would reject it. The artist must give us reasons to love the world beyond reason. The artist must be sincere to beauty but not limited by thought or morality. Sincerity means restricted commitment to this school of thought. One must be radically open to be a critic.
What criticism requires. A temperament for a relationship susceptible to beauty. Clear away all things that resist beauty. Trash use, imitativeness, profitability and moral goodness. Be open to impressions. Understanding through taste is the way of understanding modes of beauty. The critical spirit is the desire to find experience of beauty in relation to our age. Education not facts, knowledge or concepts but developing a sensitivity to beauty.
This is why we attend university and why we study this course. It is valuable because it is not profitable. We try to develop this temperament. When you leave university and people ask "What did you get?” you can say “Nothing". Sensitivity, openness to beauty. This is hard to hold onto as we age and become practical in life and lose beauty. We go to the beach or on vacation and bring a book for shelter. This allows us to contemplate, to be vulnerable, to subject ourselves to art. The point of education is to cultivate that temperament. If you leave with your head full of facts you have missed the boat. Uselessness is the cultivation of experience. We don’t like new experiences. They challenge us. But when we develop temperament we get better at it. If we can learn to love beauty now we get more out of university than facts. It has value because it is useless.
What is the end? What influence will the critic have? The purpose of aesthetic education is to perfect the self through openness to beauty in art. Being a good critic is never productive or profitable. The point of being a critic is to perfect the self. It has no other use. With the critical spirit one has a more tolerant of range of experience and contradictions. Critics should be dreamers.
The Decay of Lying has a more explicit articulation of Wilde’s theory. Art never expresses anything but itself. Art does not imitate but transforms away from judgeability by how it represents and transforms the materials of the world.
Life imitates art. Art is the form through which life attempts to give an expression of itself. Life has no meaning in the self and so as we live it we look for its meaning and art gives it. Art gives ways of expressing truth. This is esoteric but simple. We do this all the time. Explaining experience by referencing art. Art gives us the forms we need to give life meaning. Without art we wouldn’t have those forms. We find the truth of life in art not in life. We look to art and see the truth of life but without it we see chaos and suffering. Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things is the aim of art. Untruth resists use. It is detached from life so it can tell us the truth of life. There is some connection with Eliot and they are sometimes compatible.
It took me three hours to type this one hour lecture. It was more wordy than usual. I wish he would post these videos earlier in the day according the schedule laid out by the syllabus. This time I was more than half an hour late to make and have dinner.
I weighed 89.7 kilos before dinner.
I had tomatoes, avocados, and a little chopped scotch bonnet pepper with lime juice on top for dinner while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Barney is annoying Andy with his singing practice to try out to represent Mayberry in the Ladies League Musicale. The problem is that Barney is not a very good singer but Andy is too polite to tell him. He suggests that his folding letters and licking stamps might be disturbing for Barney so maybe he should practice somewhere else, but Barney doesn’t get the hint. Rafe Hollister walks in with a bushel of string beans for Aunt Bee at the same time that Barney hands Andy his guitar to ask him to accompany him on Thomas More’s “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms”. But after Barney starts singing Rafe interrupts and tells him that’s not the way it goes. Andy has Rafe sing it and we hear his fine singing voice. Andy then suggests that Rafe go and audition for the musicale as well. The result is that Rafe wins the competition and is selected to represent Mayberry. But Mrs Jeffries, the head of the Mayberry Ladies League and Mayor Stoner do not approve of someone as unkempt, poorly dressed and seedy looking as Rafe should represent Mayberry. The mayor demands that Andy tell Rafe it was a mistake. But when Andy sees how happy Rafe and his wife Martha are about this he can’t. Andy tells the mayor that Rafe will get dressed up for the event and he tricks Rafe into putting on a suit of clothes, saying it was what he should have been given when he was released from jail last year after his ten day incarceration for bootlegging. When Andy shows the new Rafe to Mrs Jeffries she reluctantly agrees that it will be all right as long as he doesn’t associate with anyone. Andy sees the hurt look on Martha’s face and he makes a decision. The night of the Musicale he brings out Rafe in his comfortable overalls and he sings beautifully, charming the crowd so much that the mayor and Mrs Jeffries reluctantly fall in. He sings “Lonesome Road" to some nice accompaniment by Andy on guitar. Mrs Dennis, the head of the Ladies League thinks Rafe wore overalls to match his selection and finds it so charming that she asks for an encore. He sings "New River Train" and gets the fancy crowd to clap hands in rhythm.
Martha was played by Kay Stewart who was in the first issue of Life Magazine when it did a feature about her being the first female cheerleader at a major university. She appeared three times on the series Front Row Centre, which featured Broadway plays. She co-starred in “Life With Henry".
Mrs Jeffries was played by Isobel Randolph, who starred in The Missing Corpse and played Mrs Abigail Uppington on the Fibber McGee and Mollie radio show in the 30s and 40s.
Mrs Dennis was played by Ottolla Nesmith, who hosted a horror movie TV show in Los Angeles in the 50s.
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