You seem to be subscribing to a naively representational view of language. Or perhaps its a well thought out view, I don't know. In any case, you're wrong. The language used shapes the content. You don't start with the content and then use language to represent it, language and content go together to form the whole. All translations are imperfect.Originally Posted by PeterL
Your comment about language shaping content is interesting, because I made a long post in another thread earlier about stylized prose and how I don't think stylized prose or linguistic virtuosity is a necessary cornerstone of prosaic aesthetics. The stylized prose of a Woolf or a Nabokov is fine and should be commended, but being a better prose stylist on its own does not necessarily indicate that one is a superior artist. Is Woolf a better artist than Dostoevsky or Balzac simply because she's a 'better' prose stylist? There's nothing wrong in my opinion with a work of prose being sustained by intellectual or philosophical depth or for lack of a better word, "content". If you want to work in a medium that necessarily rewards "technical virtuosity" for its own sake then be a poet. With prose, any sort of linguistic innovation or experimentation if necessitated should be in the service of something larger, say mimesis or humanity. It shouldn't merely serve to draw attention to itself. It would be like merely judging a painter on his or her abilities as a draughtsman, and we all know there's more to great painting to that. There's not only one great way to write a work of fiction. This is all just my opinion of course. Being an artist is not solely about being an aesthete. There's more to the task than mere aestheticism. The work has to display humanity, since the purpose of all art is ultimately mimesis. That's why the concept of art was originally conceived. This of course goes back to the cave drawings in southern France. Now I would say you're right that language and content shape each other. I'm not disagreeing with you there, but how do we define language? If we were to judge artists merely on "technical virtuosity" or if we were even to use it as merely a prerequisite it would be rather limiting I think. Was Sartre a "technical virtuoso"? Tolstoy? How do we define creativity in general? Do intellectual and philosophical ideas not have as much value as "virtuosity"?
Also, prose, much like jazz playing and even filmmaking to a certain extent, is a medium that rewards a certain level of improvisation and open-endedness, or say lack of self-containment, unlike "classical" music for instance. This implies one need not be overly precious, mannered, or a perfectionist. Some may disagree, but I don't think works of prose need to be self-contained, impeccably constructed, sculpture-like artifacts. Just my opinion though.
Last edited by mande2013; 03-24-2014 at 06:04 PM.
What should be so mystical about universality? Can you give an example of a concept that doesn't translate?
I guess we're even.
A work being a classic in one culture doesn't necessarily cause it to be universal, but there definitely is a correlation. Why else would Shakespeare have been translated so much? If there isn't a market for something (e.g. a translated Hamlet), people are going to spend their time on something else.
Last edited by HSPS; 03-24-2014 at 06:55 PM.
mande2013:
Going back to my example regarding Crime and Punishment, it is the character of Raskolnikov, and how much I relate to him, that makes the book so powerful to me. I recently read the Constance Garnett translation, and, to be sure, her prose beautifully matched what I thought to be the general tone of the novel (better than Pevear and Volokhonsky, I might add), but as far as Crime and Punishment is concerned, the prose style is secondary to the characters. The characters in a book can be beautiful, too.
I still don't think that you understand the concept of universality; although there are works of literature that have been called "classics" that are rather caught up in a particular time and place.
On the other hand, universals exist in all cultures.
Perhaps there are paticualr works that you think of as "classics" that either are not or should not be considered classics.
I am not sure, but I think Gideonthenomad thinks about books whose understanding heavily depends on the knowledge about, for example, time period or political situation. There are books like that in Polish literature and they are considered masterpieces in Poland, but can hardly be called universal. However, I don't think they are impossible to understand, they are, but knowledge about Poland's history is necessary.
It's interesting though. Why do the Russians have such a large presence outside of Russia and especially in the Anglosphere? Many of the French writers, such as Balzac, Zola, and even Stendhal have far less exposure in the English-speaking world, why? In France, Balzac is considered their 'numero un' literary figure. Yes, above Hugo even. I feel like an American student would actually have to major in French to be exposed to Balzac and Stendhal whereas as being a literature/English major would suffice for Tolstoy or Dostoevsky exposure.
Now this could just be my imagination, but people in the Anglosphere tend to more heavily value the one-off over the oeuvre within which each individual work gains much of its meaning and significance from its place within a larger body of work that adds up to more than merely the sum of its parts. Each work on its own may seem slight, but it might not be useful to hold it against say Faulkner or Balzac that neither one of them ever created a Ulysses or a Divine Comedy, since it's the oeuvre as an entity that does the talking. Now I'd be curious to know if someone on here could deliver a convincing argument against my position in the oeuvre vs. one-off debate. Many tend to have a preference for artists who created that one staggering masterpiece that shines above all the others, but there's also something to be said about the incremental progress a writer like Faulkner or Balzac makes year by year over the course of a decades-long career. I don't think one approach is inferior or superior to the other. There's something to be said about long-term dedication to craft. Someone like Dostoevsky probably fulls somewhere in the middle along the continuum between the two extremes, but if you ask ten people what Melville's best work is they'll all say Moby Dick. Naturally, these same ten people will say The Divine Comedy is Dante's best work. But if you ask ten different people what Faulkner's best is you'll get ten different answers. That's probably why people hesitate to rate Faulkner as highly as Joyce or Proust, except on This Recording, because he doesn't have that one magnum opus you can point to as his best work. His oeuvre is his magnum opus. If you ask ten people what Joyce's best is, most, but not all, will say Ulysses.
Bunuel and Rossellini suffer from the same affliction in film appreciation circles.
Last edited by mande2013; 03-25-2014 at 07:44 AM.
Someone probably could deliver a very condemnation of your idea here, but it isn't worth the trouble. It is my opinion that novels that depend on the reader having read the author's previous works do not stand well on their own, and are not truly novels. That doesn't mean that a multi-volume work can't be good, but it is different from something that becomes a completed work in a single book.
Well then the onus is on the reader, not the writer, no? This is sort of what I'm arguing. There's this notion that each novel should be this self-contained, dehistoricized entity that exists in a vacuum. But even so, I'd say Light in August does stand well on its own, even if it's not as "ambitious" as Ulysses or The Divine Comedy. That's what I'm talking about, the overvaluing of the "ambitiously" executed self-contained one-off, as if it were a cornerstone of artistic creation.
The great French filmmaker Jean Renoir said something to the effect that great art is made by artisans not artists. Perhaps it's just a French thing. Although I was born and raised in the United States, I'm half French and have been living in France for a few years, so I can probably say this, but the aforementioned "French thing" is I would say a preference for a dedication to craft ala Balzac and the organic growth of a body of work that develops incrementally over the course of perhaps decades. That's not to say Joyce and Dante aren't great artists, but the one-off does tend to be associated with 'machismo' and self-referential narcissism.
In theory, there's the possibility the one-off could just be a fluke, but when looking at an oeuvre, you know nothing's a fluke.
Last edited by mande2013; 03-25-2014 at 08:15 AM.
Actually, a writer's works are inseparable from the larger context of his/her oeuvre, in addition to the historical/social/political circumstances surrounding the production of said work. There's no question of a work "standing alone," works don't exist in a vacuum, and it's naive to assume that they do. The tendency for people (mostly in the English speaking world) to value the magnum opus as some sort of be-all end all is a misguided cultural bias. You can't understand Ulysses without being familiar with Joyce's previous work, and the context of the modernist movement in which it arose.
Well this is sort of what I'm saying, as well. Also, not all eras necessitated or necessitate a revolution in art. The first fifth to third or so of the 20th century indeed called for a revolution in almost all art forms. Now I won't get too verbose with this concept at the moment, but it's worth discussing. Not all epochs call for radical experimentation in art but all epochs do call for art.
To play devil's advocate, some might argue an artist's diligent dedication to craftsmanship with incremental improvements over the course of a lifetime might be akin to taking the path of least resistance, since it's a "work hard instead of work smart" way of concealing one's inability to create a staggering magnum opus with one stroke of the brush. You might say anyone could eventually produce Crime and Punishment or Cousin Bette with enough deliberate practice and diligence, but the same couldn't necessarily be said of the eureka moment-necessitating Ulysses or Rite of Spring. In other words, it doesn't really require innate brilliance to construct a consistent body of work as Balzac or even Dost did.
But I also think the Anglophone intelligentsia is just far more easily flattered by 'modernism' than the French intelligentsia is.
But Gideonthenomad, it's also possible that if we devalue the magnum opus and say dedicated craftsmanship is sufficient it won't provide artists with something to aim for, and thus great art won't get made. So if we send the message that the magnum opus shouldn't be the be-all end all then there'll be no incentive to aim for the sky. Now I realize my devil's advocate points may seem like "middlebrow" thinking, but perhaps that's the point. ;-)
Last edited by mande2013; 03-25-2014 at 09:38 AM.
Good and entertaining discussion.
Seeking a consensus - I think we could agree that generally, the definition of a "classic" is limited by language. But just as well, it is definied by a limited cultural view as well as a bias towards the preferences of the established academic instutution. In short, a loaded term.
LOl. I don't think your points are "middlebrow." Actually, valuing works that drastically break from the tradition (magnum opuses? opi? not sure what the plural is) is pretty highbrow. My point isn't that magnum opuses shouldn't be valued, its that they shouldn't be viewed in isolation since they are in a sensedefined by the tradition they break from, if only (although rarely only) by their rejection of it.
About artists with a sort of cumulative body of work: I think a near-perfect example, and a contemporary one at that, is Kazuo Ishiguro. His novels are formally uninventive and thematically they refine/delve more deeply into themes raised by their predecessors, sort of like someone getting closer and closer to the solution of a Rubiks Cube. Incidentally, I consider Ishiguro to be verging on the middlebrow although The Remains of the Day is excellent. Have you read Ishiguro? What's your opinion of him?
Do they?
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