Why do you have Russian in the place? Which authors have you read from this country?
Which writers from these countries have you read?
Why do you have Russian in the place? Which authors have you read from this country?
Which writers from these countries have you read?
A gap exists in your logic.Originally Posted by stlukesguild
You overtly downplay the relevance of the human emotion. The act of being content with a work, feeling happy with it, being able to empathize with its characters, laughing with them, venting at them and escaping into their world(s) all comprise a cut from the fabric of our emotions. Without emotion there is no enjoyment. Without enjoyment, the incentive to read does not exist. Also, the only reason beauty is held in high regard is because of the very emotions you seem to dismiss."For him, art is merely a means of transmitting emotions"?
I am not entirely sure of how you were able to link your previous sentence with this one by using the word "thus". You appear to claim that the emotions felt by a broad readership correlate to the quality of the work. Case-in-point, I used to read trashy romance fiction novels while being well aware of the fact that they were abysmal in a grammatical/rhetorical sense and yet I thoroughly enjoyed them because however cheesy their ideas of love were, they were ideas that resonated with me. Another ex.: I love Tyler Perry's 'Madea' plays even though the humor is crude, the acting is abysmal, and racism sticks out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, I believe the characters truly mean what they say, and therefore, their raw emotion clicks with me. I love Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (universally considered outstanding pieces of visual art) because the emotion I feel with these classical works mirrors the emotion I feel with the "Madea" and trashy romance novels. Many critics may see a blurred line separating quality from emotional interpretation in the context of visual/literary art but some people, myself included, can't make the difference. I would ramble on with more examples using my favorite video games but this reply would go on forever.Thus the more universally accessible a work of art is (or the more it reaches the lowest common denominator) the better it is
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I have more to say but I've been up over 26 hours. Insomnia is an insatiable harlot. Time to force myself to bed.
My hide hides the heart inside
Rand fits in with that description quite well also.
A gap exists in your logic.
As opposed to the huge gaping hole left by such a comment as this? So you have undoubtedly read enough of Tolstoy... including his critical essays... among the 100 or so books you admit to having read... in order to make an assessment of where I'm wrong about his critical opinions?
You overtly downplay the relevance of the human emotion. The act of being content with a work, feeling happy with it, being able to empathize with its characters, laughing with them, venting at them and escaping into their world(s) all comprise a cut from the fabric of our emotions. Without emotion there is no enjoyment.
Nearly all art conveys emotions... or rather should I say all art is capable of stirring emotions in the audience. In reality, it is the audience that brings the emotions to a work of art. What is tragic or heart-breaking to you, I may find comic and cliche-ridden. The notion that the central aim of art is "self expression"... the expression of emotions... is a Romantic notion often held firmly by adolescents. The teen-age girl's diary in which she gushes on about the boys she likes is surely "self-expressive"... laden with emotion. The baby crying because he is hungry is "self-expressive"... but I doubt either achieve the level of great art.
Tolstoy argues that the measure of art is how well it conveys emotions... and the more universally accessible the greater the art. But this is nonsense. We have probably all seen films in which the grand climax is reached... where the underdog finally triumphs... accompanied by the soaring strings of lush Neo-Romantic orchestral music... and almost no-one fails to be moved... in spite of the cliches. Again, accessibility is no measure of artistic merit. But Tolstoy adamantly rejects this idea because he is looking at art through a socio-political lens. He feels that those works of art that demand a certain degree of background information... or which challenge the audience... are inherently "elitist"... and "elitism" is bad.
Then we have the inconsistency in Tolstoy's theories in the sense that he can reject art (Beethoven and Wagner) that is powerfully "expressive" of emotions... and has reached a large (universal?) audience when that art conveys emotions/ideas that Tolstoy is uncomfortable with or feels are inappropriate to art.
You appear to claim that the emotions felt by a broad readership correlate to the quality of the work.
That was Tolstoy's aim. In spite of having been born into a privileged aristocracy, he wished to model himself as a Christ-like man of the common people. Historically, most art was the domain of the "elite"... a wealthy and educated elite. This began to change in the 19th and 20th centuries with increased literacy, access to the arts through the means of mechanical reproduction, and increased education of the larger populace. Even so the percentage of the population as a whole who put forth a great deal of effort in the appreciation, promotion, creation, and preservation of the arts is still a limited number... an "elite" by choice or elective affinity. The notion that an artist "should" strive to communicate with the largest possible audience (which essentially translates to the lowest common denominator) or that a "universal art" can exist is naive at best.
All of this says nothing of Tolstoy the writer. Undoubtedly, his novels and short stories place him in the company of an "elite" that he would deny: Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Milton, Goethe, and a few others.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Rand fits in with that description quite well also.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
One thing that is interesting in this thread is the focus upon the novel. Who are the great Russian poets? There are a number... but can they rival the French or British? What of non-fiction (Montaigne, Gibbons, Borges, Rousseau, Johnson, Goethe, etc...). What of theater? Yes, we have Checkov... but any other major players? Arguments concerning the "greatest" national body of literature must consider all of these elements.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Not a 19th century writer, but she's Russian, wrote solely about human nature, works are still well known in the West, and her works have been adapted to many other formats of art including film and video games.Rand fits in with that description quite well also.
Please elaborate if you find this inaccurate.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
I'm questioning the term "excellent" as applied to Rand.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Ah. What is your definition of excellent?
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
Well mine wouldn't include Rand (assuming you mean Ayn Rand?).
As for St. Lukes' comment on genre, well that is true, but what of other genres besides novels etc. that do not exist in other traditions. For instance, what we call Chinese "novels" are not exactly novels in the Western sense, in that they combine verse and fiction (Jin Ping Mei), or combine oral accounts with folk legends (Romance of the 3 kingdoms), or communal exercises (Japanese Tanka as a product of social sphere), or any other number of diverging strands in tradition.
Either way, this whole idea is so Western-focused that it is almost ridiculous. To even suggest that a country (which is a new invention mind you) can produce the "greatest" of anything is absurd. Can we even call Goethe a German anyway? what of Aristotle, should we call him Egyptian? See how absurd this is?
Then, we can narrow this - which language has the best literature. This is a valid question, and the one we should be exploring, as it basically removes the artificial borders that preoccupy post 1800 literature.
Yes, Ayn.
Language is an improvement over geography, but it is still senseless and in fact a tad egotistical to try and say one language's expression was superior to all others.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
I think stluke is mischaracterizing Tolstoy’s theories about art. It’s been years since I read “What is Art” – and if I can find my copy, I’ll look at it again. However, Tolstoy’s theory (as I remember it) is more complicated than “that the measure of art is how well it conveys emotions.” The film endings in which stirring music combines with trite plot-lines to yank an emotional response from the audience are precisely what Tolstoy would deplore – indeed, they are similar to what he deplored in Shakespeare and Beethoven.
Neither does Tolstoy say that “elitist” art is bad art. Instead, he (reasonably) asserts that although art which is accessible to only those with specialized education can be good art, it cannot rise to the very top artistic level of ‘universal’ art. (I remember Tolstoy offering the story of Joseph and his Brothers as one example of universal art.)
Tolstoy particularly rejects as “false art” derivative art in which the artist, instead of “infecting” the audience with original emotions that have affected the artist, infects the audience with emotions “derived” only from viewing other works of art.
I’ll look for my copy of the book this evening, and (if I find it) report back in more detail.
Last edited by Ecurb; 05-13-2013 at 03:31 PM.
Language is an improvement over geography, but it is still senseless and in fact a tad egotistical to try and say one language's expression was superior to all others.
How is it "egotistical"? Perhaps if one were to blindly champion the achievements of one's own language/nation. I can pretty much say with a near absolute degree of certainty that the greatest art produced in Western culture from 1300-1550 was that of the Italians and the greatest body of music produced in the West from 1650-1930 was that of the Germanic-Austrian tradition. Limiting myself again to Western culture, I'd have to go with the English language as having produced the greatest body of literature. We are speaking here of the literature of Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc... Within Western culture what other language could compete?
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
That is the exact fashion I meant as far as egotistical. I'm not saying you are; I'm saying having a discussion about the greatest language to produce literature would inevitably produce biases as people simply can't read every language, and if they check out a translated version, it often-times will not hold the same weight.
I guess that becomes a discussion about human nature, whether or not people will resort to saying "well i only have read british literature but it is clearly the greatest," when there has been an enormously influential body of work from India, for example.
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
The film endings in which stirring music combines with trite plot-lines to yank an emotional response from the audience are precisely what Tolstoy would deplore – indeed, they are similar to what he deplored in Shakespeare and Beethoven.
Let's face it. Tolstoy was one of the worst critics of art ever. Among those he disliked were all of the Greek playwrights, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe, Zola, Ibsen, Beethoven, and Wagner. It is difficult to afford Tolstoy's criticism any serious consideration when he is so consistently wrong.
Tolstoy declares, in What is Art that "art is the transmission to others of a special feeling experienced by the artist."
There have been other critics who have been notoriously wrong. Johnson dismissed Lawrence Sterne and Nabokov famously wrote off Dostoevsky... but these were but single failings among a body of criticism that was far more often accurate than not. And then there were the infamous rants of Mark Twain... but then again Twain was usually aiming toward satire. Tolstoy was deadly serious when he writes of Beethoven:
“…not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused, and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.”
Tolstoy's criticism has nothing to do with trite plot twists and saccharine efforts at stirring the emotions... which are rare to non-existent in either Shakespeare of Beethoven. They have far more to do with the rants of a grumpy old fart who envisioned himself as a Christ-like messiah infuriated by the fame and achievements of others.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
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