From: "Teemu Pyyluoma" <Teemu.Pyyluoma-AT-trantex.fi>
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 21:43:29 +0200
Subject: Re: PLC: Re: Literary butts






Teemu Pyyluoma-AT-TRANTEXMAIN
05.11.97 21.43

>>No, she might have chosen between different equally valid ways of
presentation with no criteria what so ever, <<
> Must disagree, and completely, based on the princple that what is said is
inseperable from how it is said. <

I disagree with putting your principle in the action (although I'm not
quite sure if we're so far apart on this). If you mean poems or sentcences,
well perhaps, although I have my doubts. I was referring mainly to whole
books (like I said I haven't been following the thread, my mistake). And in
books what is "being said" and "how it is said" aren't singular entities,
there are many things being said with a stream of expressions. and chancing
one expression doesn't necessarily lead to changes in what is being said,
which I take to be something of a more general. Sounds fuzzy? Let me try to
illustrate by an example, I think it is plausible to think that what is
being said among other things in Name of a Rose is that studying history is
like playing detective, and  if one of the characters wouldn't be named
Adson there would still be enough clues to that direction. In a nutshell, I
think that things that are being said is an abstaction of what it is said.

> The "equally valid" you refer to are nevertheless "different," and
constitute different works. The "better" you refer to may or may not so be,
but cannot escape being "different." <

Reminds me of Wittgenstein. In a collection of lectures he gave on
aesthetics he stated that to say that some piece of Wagner would be
different if orchestered in a different way is to speak of a different work
altogether (sorry for not supplying exact quote and source, I don't have my
books handy). No offence, but I think this is hair splitting. However, if
one must do ontology this way, I'd say that there is family resemblance
between different orchesrations. If you want my honest opion I think wether
we speak of a different work depends on the degree of difference, so a
restauration of Mona Lisa wouldn't make it a different work put drawing a
moustache into it would and a goat would make it even more so.

> As fare as the (artists) insights are concerned, she becomes another
critic, with the same sorts of advantages and defects all such may or may
not have. <

Agreed, although you can count on that she has actually knows the work,
which is more than you can say of some critics.
>> By the way, I often wonder wether focusing on the meaning of the work
blinds its other aspects from us, to me it seems very demeaning to consider
literature as primarily  vehicles for philosophy, social commentary... or
primarily anything. <<
> Agree. The truly "successful" work constitutes its own meaning. Again,
what does the Mona Lisa "mean"? Yet the world is a different place for the
work being in it. <

Er... yeah, I think we're in agreeal here. Reg's kind (I loved the quote)
comments might have been more on the mark, I use meaning in a rather narrow
sense.

By the way, it is truly painful to find myself figuring out what I actually
meant, and if that is what you agree with. Been a while since I've been
thinking about these things (writing cute essays on aesthetics of Thomas
Aquinas doesn't really count, actually I think it is more of a mechanical
than mental excercise). Still, it would be less embarasing if I had written
above ten months not ten hours ago.
>> I understand that in a study only certain aspects of a work are
considered, that for the sake of discussion some aspects are dropped out,
and this is fine. But to expand aforementioned tactics for complete
normative evaluation of a work is foolish not to mention depressing. <
> Sorry. I don't follow. <

Take the way Bearsley does aesthetics for example, the man was (is?)
constantly trying to eliminate anything extrinsic (I'm not sure if I'm
using the word correctly, I mean outside) to a work. Author intentions was
one thing but he also did away with the impact of the work to society,
context in general. This was fruithful for his studies and his studies
allright. It was when he moved these tactics from aesthetics to metacritics
that it started getting depressing and foolish. I don't know if he is still
alive but he certainly haunts some otherwise fine faculties.

>  What I really had in mind by literary butt kicking, was speaking out
when people carry on about universals and ineffable beauty, and the content
of metrics. <

OK.

> I would venture that the ultimate function of the critic/teacher is to
act as a rhapsode for the work. <

Ideally perhaps, but as far as the critics in my daily go, I'm happy if
they succeed in just describing a work.


>> Teemu <<
> g <


Happy kicking,
Teemu




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