William writes:
> It is one thing to experience a so-called aesthetic feeling but it is > > another > > thing to describe it. > This is true. All "descriptions" are, like "definitions", an effort to write something such that the reading of it will occasion the rising in the reader's mind of a notion more or less like the notion in the describer's mind. This effort is more serviceable with some "kinds" of notion than with others. When it comes to driving instructions, how to operate the fax machine, or what's available for dinner, your message can be acceptably serviceable. But we can't evoke certain specific experiences in an auditor who has never had that genus of experience . The standard example is trying to convey a certain visual experience to someone who's been blind all his life. Artsy6 writes: > > Can't an aesthetic experience defy description, transcend categorization > and therefore prove to be too complex to analyze? > > I'd claim you can never do it exactly -- that is, replicate in the reader's every facet of the experience. But I'd say lots of a.e.'s admit of a degree of successful "categorization" for the purpose of communicating a general notion of what you have in mind. We might say Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS "is a problem play" a la certain of Ibsen's works. We might struggle to find the adjectives that may convey the difference between Bix Beiderbecke's sound and that of Loius Armstrong. But our success would depend the reader's being non-deaf, and, indeed, on the reader's having stored some memories of the brass instruments of jazz -- or, rather, not memories of the instruments but of their sound. I used to marvel at the success of music critic Olin Downes as he tried to convey the impact of certain pianists. Often he would summon comparison to sounds ostensibly foreign to music like the shattering of glass. It is hard for me to conceive of any artist whose work defied all "categorization" whatever. But keep in mind: all such categorization is solely of notions, and what we CALL things. We are, in effect, giving our reasons for using a word. When we say gold is a rare metal, we are not trying to convey that the four letter word 'gold' is metallic. The most misleading word in our language is 'is'. I wince at how disorganized and incomplete these remarks of mine are.
