Page 205, Testimony – finally nearing the end of this book. I have been working much lately hanging out as well, darn social life getting in the way of my reading. I try to fight it sometimes but then people get angry with me. People who make my life less fun. So i go. But here’s a good excerpt:
Don’t believe humanists, citizens, don’t believe prophets, don’t believe luminaries – they’ll fool you for a penny. Do your won work, don’t hurt people, try to help them. Don’t try to save humanity all at once, try saving one person first. It’s a lot harder. To help one person without harming another is very difficult. It’s unbelievably difficult. That’s where the temptation to save all of humanity comes from. And then, inevitably, along the way you discover that all humanity’s happiness hinges on the destruction of a few hundred million people, that’s all. A trifle.
Nothing but nonsense in the world, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once said. It’s that nonsense that I try to depict.
And so forth. I think it speaks for itself rather well, however I have the benefit of a large amount of helpful context as well, so leave comments, please. There is also the obligatory connection to dad mentioned casually… which is something I felt far before I knew from Shostakovich’s work.
Oh DEAR LORD. Tolstoy you are killing me. With your unassailable mountain of knowlege. Chapter three is the aesthetic equivalent to stephen hawking’s “A Breif History of Time.” You understand 5% of it and it blows your mind. Well, I’m not sure my mind was blown, come to think of it, but it definitely experienced a buffer overflow. Gonna hafta re-read this chapter after i finish the book. Basically Tolstoy just delineates every important theory of aesthetics up until the 20th century. Its too much to grasp. Too much subtle difference between the four philosophies that sound the same. Too much trying to reconcile what you think with all of this. Its like trying to put together a 500 piece puzzle by throwing the pieces at each other in mid-air. not likely.
I finally got to the library today. Here’s the list:
2 books on DHTML… they kinda suck, whatever.
Shostakovich’s Testimony
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration – if I want to be phil spector, this is required reading.
Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones including the Garden of Forking Paths.
Elgar’s Enigma Variations which is almost certainly the most beautiful music ever to come out of Britain.
Beethoven’s Triple Concerto
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (with libretto)
Penderecki: Violin Sonatas 1 and 2. Some random 20th C composer, but he’s Jonny Greenwood’s all time fav so… i must know.
Charlie Parker: the birth of bebop
Miles and Monk at Newport.
Oh and the Naxos classical label kicks…. donkeybrains.
Well here’s an excerpt from Testimony (p. 121 in my Harper and Row 1979 edition) to mull over before you fall asleep:
“How did people behave then? As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person. If the enemy of the people wrote books, they threw away his books, if they had letters from him, they burned the letters. The mind can’t grasp the number of letters and papers burned in that period, no war could ever clean out domestic archives like that. And naturally, photographs flew into the flames first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.”
Why can’t I find my copy of 1984???
In response to previous comments, yes kate purpuse is a dangerous word. But not when you consider how everything in life is connected. That makes nothing purposeless. It is how I can say that every thing that happened in the entire course of human history changed my life. Even if I don’t know about it. Purpose – very loose. And yes I read the introduction and appreciate the fact that this book comes from an old and perhaps frustrated, but nonetheless perhaps wiser, perhaps more sentimental Tolstoy. John I don’t think that assuming a culture has a common set of metaphors means that there is underlying absolutes about something. I can say my soul is black and nearly all Westerners will be creeped out by that. That is what I mean by a common metaphor.
This leads me in to chapter two. Tolstoy talks about how there is no “beautiful” deed or music in the Russian language. In Russian, the word beautiful only applies to visual pleasurefulness. This separates the “good” from the “beautiful” a bit. IIIInteresting. Ok ok short chapter tolstoy closes out by quoting two people on what art is… Schasler and Veron… Schasler kinda says, “either you define art with flowery empty words or you clumsily try with awkward philosophic terms… no wait there’s a mix of those too as well.” Veron kinda says, “there’s an absolute beauty. art is sorta a physical manifestation of it… which is why its so different cuz each work of art shows the ideal from a different angle.” I am having trouble with these two quotes… why are they compared? what am I supposed to learn about the one from the other? maybe I am reading one or both wrong…
Ok Tolstoy I’m waiting for you to blow my mind. You are not doing it yet. You are like Charlie Peacock in this book “At the Crossroads.” You talk a lot about the question and do not talk about the answer much. I am well aware of the questions. I am well versed in why we should ask them. I am even ready to throw off my own biases and listen to you, wizened old man that you are. Okay okay, bring it on already! perhaps tomorrow.
So i’m reading Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” now. Kate said it made her angry so it would probably make me really angry. But Tolstoy doesn’t like Wilde, so I agree with him there. Aestheticism is silly. But Tolstoy doesn’t like Beethoven, so he complete and utter moron. But Tolstoy doesn’t like Wagner, so I think I need to listen to more Wagner.
Ok, chapter one goes into great detail to set up art as a”big endeavor” sort of thing. Thousands of people, some paid much, some paid little, all being criticised harshly when they make mistakes… Tolstoy asks, “What for? What is the sense of all this?”
“So on is quite ata a loss as to whom all these things are done for. The man of culture is heartily sick of them, while to a real working man they are utterly incomprehensible. If anyone can be pleased by these things (which is doubtful0, it can only be some young footman or depraved artisan, who has contracted the spirit of the upper classes but is not yet satiated with their amusements, and wishes to show his breeding.”
There is some of me in that. It happens. There are times when I prove the opposite of myself, as well, to be fair.
Tolstoy closes out the chapter saying that all artists of a particular movement all disown artists of all other movements…. the old romanticists deny the parnassians and the decadents, the dadaists deny all who came before, the tolstoy’s deny the aestheticists… its the natural lot of artistic movements. Tolstoy says this is sort of a problem, since it is evidence that we do not agree on what is meant by art, and what is valuable in art.
OK OK reactions. Chapter one is not so groundbreaking. kate asked me once what I thought about art for art’s sake. i think i said it was cool sometimes, but that I prefer my art to have some driving force behind it. Really I am just overcompensating for people who are overly pragmatic. What I believe is always somwhere between what I think and what I say. I do like art with a purpose, gasp, maybe even a use. I just define these things very very loosely, and don’t ever throw things out rashly.
Tolstoy sets up the opera rehearsal as a big spectacle. Then he isolates it, making it appear very very foreign to us. But art does not exist in a vacuum. ANYTHING put inside of this strict mental isolation becomes foreign, pointless, nihilistic… Meaning is all metaphor. Part of being an artist is knowing how to manipulate the collective set of metaphors that a culture (or all of humanity, preferably, but that is not always possible) is familiar with. This is probably the primary reason for me to view popular music as a valid medium for creating art. That said, it is seldom done. That gets us into the art/craft distinction and I have such a hard time remembering thoughts that i had previously organized (that’s one of the reasons I have a blog) that I can’t talk about that tonight. Plus I’m a little tired. Comment if you care but this is straightforward (pretty boring) stuff so far.
I’m sorry everyone for three posts in a day. My reading has just been too good today, and I need to post iit if for no other reason than to make sure I remember it. So here we go!!
“For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villians. But there are very few heroes or villians. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They’re gray. A dirty shade of gray.
“And its in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place. it’s a huge ant hill in which we all crawl. In the majority o cases, our destinies are bad. We are treated harsly and cruelly. And as soon as someone crawls a little higher, the’s ready to torture and humiliate others.
“That is the situation that needs watching, in my opinion. You must write about the majority of people and for the majority. And you must write the truth – then it can be called realistic art. Who needs the tragedies? There’s an Ilf and Petrov story about a sick man who washes his foot before going to the doctor. When he gets there he notices that he washed the wrong one. Now, that’s a real tragedy.
Oh beautiful.
