Pride is a reception of love. It's not the glad or tragic subject but the feeling of an unconditional mutation between you and the cause of your experience, even if you don't understand it. Your a.e. experience of tragedy is unquestionable, uncontrolled , union of "tragic" with your consciousness. You create the tragedy. You feel pride in having the capacity to do that. You feel loved -- not by the tragic subject-matter but by the totality of the experience...the transfusion, as it were of your notion of tragedy and the unexpected being at one with it. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, March 1, 2010 4:31:50 PM Subject: Re: "What is happening during an 'a.e.'?" William writes: " See my post re love." Here's that post: "I'm taking a shot at answering Cheerskep's quest for what happens in the aesthetic experience. "It is the feeling of being loved, throughly understood, accepted, and admired. The "oceanic feeling"? In this way the work of art is like a magic mirror, an objectified consciousness, momentarily surpassing, or forgiving, our flaws. I'm suggesting that the aesthetic experience is always the private, even secretive feeling of being loved even when, paradoxically , the art work reflects our own sense of projected resistance or unworthiness." When I read this, I wasn't sure if you were characterizing the a.e. of the contemplator or of the creator. In either case, it's impossible for me reasonably to deny that you feel that way. If indeed that is the way you feel as a contemplator, your experience is so unlike mine it adds yet more mystery to a.e. As I cycle through my mind now the varieties of a.e.'s I've had, I have to report that I can recall none that gave me or reminded me of the feeling of being loved. Indeed, it's possible that part of the experience as I "shivered" at, say, a great tragic ending, was a sense of the moment's indifference to me. As the hero died, I was like an unseen urchin witnessing the death of the great man. When I think about, it seems to me that effective "sad" works in general -- on stage, in music, in poetry - leave me somewhat with a comparable feeling of being an unnoticed member of the swelling rain, accidentally privileged perhaps, but of no concern or interest to the eminent principals at the center of the tragic event. As a creator, I've had moments when, as I observed what I'd just written down, I was convinced I had nailed it. (Recall: I consider every so-called "work of art" to be an aggregate of many "works".) The faulty but suggestive image that just came to my mind was that of an artisan who painstakingly constructs a birdbath on his grounds and then takes a kind of personal credit for the pretty creature that has just glided down to it. When le mot feels to me juste enough, I get a minor a.e. cum fleeting glee - "Look what I just did!" - but, again, as I search the feeling, I can't say it is, for me, one of being loved. I find the sensation that is often called "pride" to be interesting. I've numerous times taken "pride" in a moment that I played no part in creating. As I sit here groping for glimpses into the nature of a.e., it occurs to me that the sensation of pride is a not-too-distant cousin of aesthetic experience.
