Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 10:18:19 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT <fhertzbe-AT-ra.abo.fi>
Subject: Re: PLC: Form and Content (was I hate "beauty"!!!


On Fri, 18 Aug 2000 Patsloane-AT-aol.com wrote:

> In any case, I don't find much interest in books with titles like _What is 
> Beauty?_ It's too clear at this point that the word is too relativistic to be 
> of any use--that it means whatever a particular speaker wants it to mean. To 
> me, it would be beautiful to watch a surgeon operating. Somebody else might 
> find it repellant.  Books on the creative process might be interesting, 
> though I tend to get my art theory from artists rather than from philosophers 
> or psychologists. 

Nice points. Aesthetics is not unproblematically linked to beauty. Aesthetic 
originally meant 'of the body, senses', which I think is a more useful 
turn/term. For me, poetry is not harmony, mor like noise, more like 
confusion, working towards new perceptions, new methods, working aainst 
habit, dehabitualizing, deautomatizing, it is an estrangement therapy, 
not about how to be a pleasant guy, or not just about beautiful things 
(although maybe also that to some extent of course). But poetry as 
discourse, in itself, not explainable in prosaic (prozaic) paraphrase. 
Poetry as (social) practice. 

Fred


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