It is a testament to this book that I have rather little to say about it. Normally I would measure a book by the extent to which it yields to my attacks and releases hidden layers of meaning, but this book is specifically designed to resist such an assault. It is, by intelligent design, so utterly transparent, that no chink in its walls could I find from which to mount my usual literary disassembly. The one less than satisfying point in Darwin's arguments, namely that regarding the reasons for the reduced ability of species to breed in proportion to the distance between them, would have been handily dispatched had he lived a few more decades to read of Miescher's discovery of nuclein.
So solid is Darwin's reasoning that the instinct is nearly irresistible to apply it to other fields of study, in particular: linguistics. Darwin even hinted at the affinity of this field to his thought in using it to illustrate his case on more than one occasion. After all, his argument hinges upon the idea that what we call a "species" is rather open to interpretation, and refers to the term as "a mere useless abstraction" and "arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other." How reminiscent this is of Max Weinreich's observation that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." One might even go so far as to apply the theory to poetry or literature, as Ferdinand Brunetiere did--unsuccessfully.
Nonetheless, there were in Darwin's time, and remain today, those who insist on disregarding this, in my opinion, well-proven and easily visible principle. If such ones would really bother to consider Darwin's evidence, they would be forced to admit, either that natural selection is a well-documented natural phenomenon, or that the divine creator executed her or his plan in such a way as to conceal her or his own existence. To do otherwise, as Darwin observes, "makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception."
Thursday, September 06, 2018
Shane
I knew I wasn't making it up! Way back at the beginning of this blog, when I was still teaching public high school, I made this comment, to the effect that there was an awful lot of sexual tension in a book intended for young adults. What was subtext in the book became quite textual in the movie, to the credit of the director. It was a solidly constructed movie, with nice cinematography and performances, though the lighting director should have been sacked.
But that which captures the notice of a modern viewer most about this movie is not the quality, by which measure it could fairly be described as "serviceable". Rather, it is a depiction of masculinity that it at once toxic and frighteningly accurate. The two men at the center of the movie seem, on the surface, to be motivated by what some might call "honor", the desire to do the right thing. But while they have some tendencies in that direction, their honors are constantly undercut by an even more powerful motivator: concern over how they are perceived. And it is pointedly not only in the eyes of the woman they both have feelings for that they struggle to be perceived as "men". They struggle even harder for honor in the eyes of the young boy through whose eyes we witness the story. They can bear any manner of indignity and insult, but the one thing they cannot endure--and that which leads them into foolish, performative masculinity--is for little Joey to think of them as cowards.
The film treats this as a virtue, rather than what it really is: a fatal flaw that nearly gets everyone killed. But I don't think of this as detracting from the film. It is, in fact, a perfectly accurate description of the way males are raised to view themselves, and the forces against which even such noble men as Shane and Joe continue to struggle.
But that which captures the notice of a modern viewer most about this movie is not the quality, by which measure it could fairly be described as "serviceable". Rather, it is a depiction of masculinity that it at once toxic and frighteningly accurate. The two men at the center of the movie seem, on the surface, to be motivated by what some might call "honor", the desire to do the right thing. But while they have some tendencies in that direction, their honors are constantly undercut by an even more powerful motivator: concern over how they are perceived. And it is pointedly not only in the eyes of the woman they both have feelings for that they struggle to be perceived as "men". They struggle even harder for honor in the eyes of the young boy through whose eyes we witness the story. They can bear any manner of indignity and insult, but the one thing they cannot endure--and that which leads them into foolish, performative masculinity--is for little Joey to think of them as cowards.
The film treats this as a virtue, rather than what it really is: a fatal flaw that nearly gets everyone killed. But I don't think of this as detracting from the film. It is, in fact, a perfectly accurate description of the way males are raised to view themselves, and the forces against which even such noble men as Shane and Joe continue to struggle.
Sunday, September 02, 2018
Tsuina Miura: 亜人
이책을 통해서 알게 된 것은 그책을 읽은 시간이 작읐을 만큼 작다. 즉 이제 하루안에 한국어로 된 만화책을 끝낼 수가 있다, 아직 그렇게 하면서 사전이 필요하다, 한국어 능력을 더 이상 높이려면 한달에 한 권을 읽는 게 충분하지 않다.
Benedetto Croce: Poetry and Literature
"Great and varied, then, is the labor, the effort, and the thought of the man who wants to 'give names to things'" (131). With this reference to Pythagoras by way of Cicero, Croce declares at once his intention, and his difficulty. If he felt the task before him to be monumental, that of "naming" poetry and literature as he did with some measure of success for "art", he clearly didn't pay attention to his contemporary Wittgenstein. If he had, he would have known that the task is not difficult, but impossible.
It's a pity that Wittgenstein's ideas about the nature of language weren't published until the year after Croce's death (if I reckon correctly). Perhaps reading the former's works would have opened the latter's eyes to the fact that what he determined about poetry, the experience, also applies to "Poetry", the word. "The joy which everyone feels in a poem (as though the poem were the reader's own work; his own creation)", well-observed by Croce, is the same joy that he sought in "naming" poetry (84). Perhaps it's a mercy that he died before realizing that his definitions, his names, were no more universal than the deeply personal joy of poetry itself.
The words that Croce put on Poetry and Literature do not inspire in me the same moment of awakening that his words for Art did. If anything, they seem to obfuscate the questions, backtracking on and losing the thread of his earlier work. The beauty of his Aesthetic lay in its simplicity and clarity. So successfully did he craft his word, that in the eyes of this reader he could simply have answered the question of poetry by saying "ditto". If Art is the moment where the universal human moment finds union with the individual artistic expression, then how is Poetry any different, save in the medium?
As for this reader, Poetry is not the same as Art, though the two ideas overlap. Croce correctly observes that poetry is "The rhythmization of the universe", just as painting is its visualization, and music its vibration (195). But he is incorrect to stop there, for rhythm alone does not make poetry, it is but one level of that which makes something "poetic". The texture, figurative language, structure, and music of a poetic work all lay upon each other in a marvelous palimpsest with other elements, and something is "poetic" in my mind to the exact degree that its layers are many and sympathetic to each other. Something can accordingly be "poetic" without being "art", and vice versa. The best, naturally, are those things that are both.
And Croce further loses his way when adding the element of Literature to the mix. This is a third miracle, independent of, but overlapping with, the other two. Poetry and Art exist in a vacuum, in that they are moments unto themselves. Literature is not; it is the very act of "Letters", of knowing, using, and connecting to the rest of existing human discourse. A work is Literary to the exact degree that it connects with everything else, using the nature of its particular medium as the conductive material.
But if I were to assume that others experience the three miracles in the same way that I do, I would be making the same mistake Croce did. It is only for me that Art is the miracle of expression, Poetry the miracle of plurality, and Literature the miracle of connection. Whether proclaiming such is merely an act of cowardice in the light of its unprovability, and whether Croce wasn't a better man to have at least tried, is a matter that will have to remain open for now.
It's a pity that Wittgenstein's ideas about the nature of language weren't published until the year after Croce's death (if I reckon correctly). Perhaps reading the former's works would have opened the latter's eyes to the fact that what he determined about poetry, the experience, also applies to "Poetry", the word. "The joy which everyone feels in a poem (as though the poem were the reader's own work; his own creation)", well-observed by Croce, is the same joy that he sought in "naming" poetry (84). Perhaps it's a mercy that he died before realizing that his definitions, his names, were no more universal than the deeply personal joy of poetry itself.
The words that Croce put on Poetry and Literature do not inspire in me the same moment of awakening that his words for Art did. If anything, they seem to obfuscate the questions, backtracking on and losing the thread of his earlier work. The beauty of his Aesthetic lay in its simplicity and clarity. So successfully did he craft his word, that in the eyes of this reader he could simply have answered the question of poetry by saying "ditto". If Art is the moment where the universal human moment finds union with the individual artistic expression, then how is Poetry any different, save in the medium?
As for this reader, Poetry is not the same as Art, though the two ideas overlap. Croce correctly observes that poetry is "The rhythmization of the universe", just as painting is its visualization, and music its vibration (195). But he is incorrect to stop there, for rhythm alone does not make poetry, it is but one level of that which makes something "poetic". The texture, figurative language, structure, and music of a poetic work all lay upon each other in a marvelous palimpsest with other elements, and something is "poetic" in my mind to the exact degree that its layers are many and sympathetic to each other. Something can accordingly be "poetic" without being "art", and vice versa. The best, naturally, are those things that are both.
And Croce further loses his way when adding the element of Literature to the mix. This is a third miracle, independent of, but overlapping with, the other two. Poetry and Art exist in a vacuum, in that they are moments unto themselves. Literature is not; it is the very act of "Letters", of knowing, using, and connecting to the rest of existing human discourse. A work is Literary to the exact degree that it connects with everything else, using the nature of its particular medium as the conductive material.
But if I were to assume that others experience the three miracles in the same way that I do, I would be making the same mistake Croce did. It is only for me that Art is the miracle of expression, Poetry the miracle of plurality, and Literature the miracle of connection. Whether proclaiming such is merely an act of cowardice in the light of its unprovability, and whether Croce wasn't a better man to have at least tried, is a matter that will have to remain open for now.
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