Tom Cod ([email protected]) wrote on 2009-08-15 at 22:35:31 in about [Marxism] Exchange on Woodstock:
Woodstock being remembered four decades later is just one more proof that artistic and generally cultural productions of us humans last longer than the remembrance of the people ruled at that time or whose political action made those cultural manifestations possible or tried to make them impossible. We know of Antonio Vivaldi and many love his music, but who can remember who was Pope in Rome and who ruled Venice in his time? Music composed by Johann-Sebastian Bach is still performed and loved all over the world, but who remembers the Grand Duke of Brandenburg who gave Bach the livelyhood to write the Brandenburg Concertos? Isn't the memory of the English kings and queens kept alive by the wonderful art of William Shakespeare? We admire the Gothic and Romanic churches in Western Europe, the Roman theatres, Greek temples, Egyptian pyramides, but what do we know about the political fights taking place at the times their creation? What do we know of the people who ruled when the Mayan pyramides or the sculputres marking the Easter Island (as Europeans call it)? Coming back to Woodstock -- how many people dreaming of Woodstock and re-hearing its Music can tell who was POTUS then? Fidel Castro once made similar remarks, telling an interviewer that he would be long forgotten while the art being created in his time would still be alive and kicking. But should Fidel Castro have given up on politics and have pursued a carreer as musician in the Havana brothrels? > For me, that's dialectical materialism. Tom Cod quoted his correspondent D. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
