On Aug 1, 2012, at 6:42 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > Did Joseph Conrad (author of "Heart of Darkness") probably mean that an > artist's creation should provide a clearer view of reality?
"Should provide"? How about just "gives"? I'm not aware of any WoA that was intentionally devised to hide, obscure, becloud, or confuse a view of reality, including notoriously "difficult" examples like "Finnegan's Wake" or "At Swim Two Birds" and similar books. The same in other fields (Cage, Rauschenberg, Glass). They are attempts by the author to use another mode to present or represent ... something. Surrealism, with its intentional dislocations, odd combination, distortions, and other confusions, was developed to reveal the reality above the reality we see (sur realisme). In its own way, it was a kind of Neoplatonism, an attempt to look through that which is presented to our senses to another, better, more true reality. Your question implies a moral or ethical dimension that encompasses the work or artist, or both. "Should provide" and "clearer." Why should? Why clearer? When scientists attempt to validate a hypothesis, such as finding the Higgs boson and thus certifying one of the final aspects of the Grand Unified Field theory, it most certainly is not "clearer" to all but a small handfull of knowledgeable people. "Should" it be "clearer"? Or should it be true? The Scholastics were smart cookies. In their philosophy, the One, Good, True, and Beautiful were co-manifestations of each other. The One was True and Good and Beautiful, as the Beautiful was True, and the Good was One, etc. So when the scientists prove the existence of the Higgs boson, they will have come closer to demonstrating the unity of the GUF theory, which is, by definition, One, and it will be Beautiful (even though it is complicated), and True and Good. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
