William writes:
> I don't think any of us > would exclude some analytical cognition whenever "that feeling" is > experienced. > Again and again, "It's a matter of degree" comes to mind when the "matter" is "aesthetic". Williams puts his finger on something of interest and, I'd guess, importance here: Of course it depends on what one has in mind with "analytic cognition", but first thought says that theater as a genre entails more "cerebral" attention than music, and that within those two genres the degree differs from work to work. With certain "mood" pieces of music -- e.g. Cowell's "Aeolian harp", Debussy's "impressionist" pieces -- I find I bask in them with no more cerebral analysis than when in a warm bath. But Shakespeare, Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde summon much more cerebral alertness. When plays get so analytically cerebral as in the "problem play" I can be irritated to the point of being repelled, and the question of an a.e. never arises. Perhaps the nearest thing to "impressionist" theater is the "theater of the absurd" a la Ionesco. Trying to read a specific textual "meaning" into "The Chairs" seems deluded to me. (Ionesco himself uses the word 'impression' when talking about what he was after.) I'm inclined to want to believe that cerebral text is almost a deterrent to exciting an a.e., but the evidence rebuts me: the fates of Hamlet, Willy Loman, Blanche DuBois, depend on a cerebral grasp of their plight. In Dickinson's poetry, an essential part of the effect derives from the notions behind her diction. Yet, the cerebral Wallace Steven leaves me cold. At the other exreme, mere verbal stunting does nothing for me. (E.g. Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix": "I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three" etc. ) My thinking feels quite primitive to me as I consider the cerebal-vs-visceral (or 'plasmic' -- choose your adjective) composition of the cause of an a.e., and even of the a.e. itself.
