The 19th century French classicists

[Etienne]

No... I'm not suggesting that Britain, Russia, America, or anyone else took the title from the French. Rather no one held hegemony the way that France did for a period in the 19th century... and Italy did for a longer period during the Renaissance. A list of the 10 or 20 greatest novels of the 20th century would find contributions from all over. Personally... as much as I like Apollinaire, Eluard, Valery... and more recently Yves Bonnefoy... I have yet to have read any French 20th century poet whom I feel can match or surpass Montale, Rilke, Pessoa, Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, Garcia-Lorca, Pessoa, or Vallejo... but neither would I suggest that France no longer continued to produce top-notch poetry... and undoubtedly the innovations of Surrealism may have had far greater impact than might be suggested when simply considering the quality of Breton and the other Surrealist poets.

From my experiences in art school I repeatedly found French who refused to admit that the French hegemony in the arts was no longer a reality... and many Americans who far over-stated the supposed American usurping of that crown. If I were to make a list of the 20 greatest working artists in 1890, at least 10 would be French. If I were to do the same in 1920... perhaps 4 or 5 would be French... but another 4 or 5 would be living and working in France. If I were to ask about today... I would be hard-pressed to come up with a single important French artist... perhaps Christian Boltanski. Of course... in spite of the image of America dominating the 1950s with the great Abstract Expressionists, Francis Bacon, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Tapies, Giorgio Morandi, and others are equal to any of the AbEx giants. America... or rather New York may dominate the art market... and London especially now offers a serious challenge with all the money coming in from Russian and Middle-Eastern and Chinese billionaires... but no one seriously dominates the actual production of art... the center does not hold... there is no center.

Yes I agree with that post, in your previous post you seemed to mean something different.

[stlukesguild]

...in your previous post you seemed to mean something different.

Perhaps my intonation... or my intention did not carry over. For example... when I suggested that the crown for greatest novelist was up for grabs and then ran down some possible claimants, concluding with "... but the French have Proust"... in no way was I suggesting something to the effect of "the French only have Proust". Rather, I was suggesting that Proust alone could stand up to the massed achievements of many others... perhaps not unlike Shakespeare... or Dante... he offers quite a world in but a single artist. But again there's no clear cut winner in the artistic heavyweight bout.

So who takes the title in the field of music for the century?

[JBI]

...in your previous post you seemed to mean something different.

Perhaps my intonation... or my intention did not carry over. For example... when I suggested that the crown for greatest novelist was up for grabs and then ran down some possible claimants, concluding with "... but the French have Proust"... in no way was I suggesting something to the effect of "the French only have Proust". Rather, I was suggesting that Proust alone could stand up to the massed achievements of many others... perhaps not unlike Shakespeare... or Dante... he offers quite a world in but a single artist. But again there's no clear cut winner in the artistic heavyweight bout.

So who takes the title in the field of music for the century?

I would argue, for the west, something along the lines of John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, or perhaps Duke Ellington. In terms of innovation, Stravinsky seems to be the best composer, yet I confess that his sound bothers me in most his pieces, as they just plainly, to me at least, aren't enjoyable to listen to.

[Etienne]

I would argue, for the west, something along the lines of John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, or perhaps Duke Ellington. In terms of innovation, Stravinsky seems to be the best composer, yet I confess that his sound bothers me in most his pieces, as they just plainly, to me at least, aren't enjoyable to listen to.

I simply love the Firebird and the Rite of Spring, they rang are among my favorite musical pieces.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I was thinking along the same lines. I love Mahler, Richard Strauss, Kurt Weill, some Webern and Schönberg, and a few other Germans... The Russians have Stravinsky (who does little for me outside of the Rite of Spring and the Firebird), Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, and a number of others. There are some great French composers: Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen... but I often notice that the great jazz composers/performers are often slighted... not taken seriously... in spite of the fact that the sort of improvisational performances that were their forte were not unlike those of the Baroque era in which the composers would often compose the bass line or but part of the structure in places leaving it open to the individual performer to improvise on the spot. One can get an idea of this from some of Keith Jarrett's live improvised performances. Such spontaneous/improvised work also echoes some of the aesthetic approaches in Japanese art as well as Abstract Expressionism.

[ntropyincarnate]

French and Russian writers are uneatable

Are you sure they're uneatable? Did you ever try?

[JBI]

Are you sure they're uneatable? Did you ever try?

Too much too chew.

[Etienne]

Uneatable? But frog legs are delicious!

[ntropyincarnate]

well maybe those then...but what about the russians?

[Jozanny]

Another motif I had thought of, but earlier forgot to mention when Lauréamont entered the picture: Both the Romantics and the Realists seem to have a curious undercurrent in relation to sex. Different as Balzac and Maupassant are, they seem to have a healthy appreciation of what good love-making amounts to between couples, whereas Hugo and Zola--again, different in terms of style and intent, seem to have a nearly repressed hysteria about intimacy. In Nanna, especially, Zola earned a red flag because he seems to nearly be ready to vomit at the gills when combining sex and material greed; Hugo is little better, in either of his major works. Flaubert is somewhere in the middle.

Laureamount is little use to me. I found a few passages in translation and shrugged. Reminded me of the cheap camp horror in the Chuckie doll movies. Perhaps I am becoming too generational, even though Obama is little more than six months my senior (sighs)...

[Etienne]

"Laureamount is little use to me. I found a few passages in translation and shrugged. Reminded me of the cheap camp horror in the Chuckie doll movies."

Did you fall on that part where he makes out with a shark?

[Bitterfly]

ADifferent as Balzac and Maupassant are, they seem to have a healthy appreciation of what good love-making amounts to between couples,

You should check out Maupassant's short stories about necrophilia. Deeelicious.