On Mar 8, 2009, at 4:07 PM, [email protected] wrote:
(1) An artist's or critic's "explanation" may lead to greater
"understanding" of sorts, and "admiration" in a contemplator, but
never to an "aesthetic experience" -- except of a bogus sort,
Are you saying that someone can experience at least two sorts of
aesthetic experience, the bogus and the non-bogus? Explain that,
please. Explain what you have in mind when you say bogus a.
experience, and by inference, the non-bogus a. experience.
like the shallow awe that arose in the minds of young readers of
Eliot's "The Wasteland" a couple of generations ago when they read
the "Notes" to the poem.
(2) I think an artist's prouncements about the "meaning" or "theme"
of a work restrict the work's apparent scope, and hobble viewers'
imaginations.
Oh, really? How do the artist's pronouncements restrict the scope you
bring to the work (because the work has no reach of its own)? How do
they make you think? Is there something in the words of the
pronouncements that exercises power over you? <g> You're hobbled only
insofar as you *agree* to think the notions the artist describes to you.
As Reagan said to Gorbachev, "trust but verify": Okay, Cheerskep, I
will accept your pronounceent that that is what you intended the play
to convey. But I will still refer to my own experience of it to
determine whether your remarks covered all I experience, or more, or
less.
In fiction or theater, talk of its "meaning" tends to suggest the
play is merely a useful ladder leading up to the real value: a non-
fiction lesson. The real value of a play or novel or movie for me is
in the multi-rung ladder itself, the story and its effects at each
rung, just as it is in an opera or symphony.
I'm afraid you're back to hectoring us as if we were sophomore LitCrit
students. I'm pretty sure all of us can grasp that "the" meaning of a
piece is a convenient phrase that should not be taken dogmatically,
that representations can be construed in different ways, that there
are different "meanings" and that there are suitably thorough social
and cultural ways to determine the degree of fitness of all the many
"meanings" that are associated with any representation.
There is a Venn diagram with many ellipses (not just the standard
two or three). The whole domain (the rectangle) is "Experience"; one
circle is "The Play"; another is "Author's Comments re: The Play"; a
third is "Viewer's Comprehension of Play"; and yet another is
"Viewer's Comprehension of Author's Comments"; etc.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
