Post 9toHbrErfrdIgVvV2W by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
(DIR) More posts by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
(DIR) Post #9toGZdhYvyYOAOjBvk by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T19:19:20.828635Z
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> "Of course he could not deny Chopin's talent, and it seems that some works by Chopin, such as the Barcarolle, the Fantasy in F minor, and some Nocturnes, appealed to him to some extent, but this by no means altered the fact that he disliked the whole atmosphere which emanated from Chopin and his method of composition" [4]. tchaikovsky hated chopin because he was a disgusting polish subhuman
(DIR) Post #9toHbrErfrdIgVvV2W by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-07T19:30:56.236769Z
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@augustus Brainlets like to dismiss Chopin because he only wrote for piano despite the fact that he was demonstrably one of the greatest masters of counterpoint on par with both Bach and Mozart.>In this respect, Chopin, although among the most radical musicians of his time, was deeply conservative and even reactionary. For him, counterpoint was the basis of all composition, and in conversation with friends like the painter eugène delacroix, he illustrated this point by citing Mozart rather than Bach. It was not just the learned and ostentatious display of fugues and canons that he thought important, but the hidden contrapuntal mastery— the voice-leading, as it is called— of the different inner and outer lines in all music.
(DIR) Post #9toIdvKXX6GVuL87Ky by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T19:42:31.880964Z
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>I forgot to thank you for sending me Liszt's book on Chopin. I had read it before, and I must say I don't like it. It is full of empty phrases and waffle, as well as insults against the Russians.pyotr absolutely SEETHING
(DIR) Post #9toJCJB1NXRriD4cUq by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T19:48:44.782846Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@deorsum it's true tchaikovsky's sympathies were much more with orchestral music and elaborate instrumentation, but also Chopin wrote fairly dark indulgent angry pieces which seems to contrast with tchaikovsky's nature, with that of making happy dainty little sweet melodic shit
(DIR) Post #9toJNTD4PsGI0xM1lQ by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T19:50:45.777653Z
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@deorsum >How grateful I am to the circumstances of my life and musical career, as I am obliged to them for the fact that Mozart has not lost one bit of his ingenuous, enchanting charm for me. You cannot imagine, my dear friend, what wondrous emotions I experience when I become absorbed in his music! It has nothing in common with those painful delights which Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, and indeed all music after Beethoven causes. The latter startles and fascinates, but it does not caress or lull one as Mozart's music does. I ascribe my capability to be delighted by Mozart to the fact that until the age of 17 I did not really know any music, and that it was only as a result of a performance of Don Giovanni that I realised what music is and fell in love with it. Other people of my generation, who from their childhood years were already steeped in the spirit of contemporary music, became acquainted with Mozart only after they were accustomed, say, to Chopin, in whom the Byronic spirit of despair and disillusionment is reflected so strongly. Fortunately for me, Fate allowed me to grow up in a family that was not very musical, and thanks to that in my childhood I was not tainted by that poison which music after Beethoven is suffused with. Likewise, when I was an adolescent Fate directed me to Mozart and through him opened up to me hitherto unknown horizons of infinite musical beauty. And these youthful impressions will never fade away now. Do you know that when I play and study Mozart's works, I feel younger and brighter in spirit, almost as if I were a youth!Lil' Pyotr talking about how literally everything made after Beethoven was complete shit
(DIR) Post #9toJvXDo0TlOIpwR84 by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-07T19:56:53.755376Z
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@augustus Add this to Tolstoy's comments on Shakespeare one can conclude that slavs have a deficience sense of aesthetics, it's a pity he couldn't hear the continuity. Like Mozart, Chopin owed a lot to the style of Italian operas. In fact, Chopin have been writing nothing but bel canto opera arias all his life, and like Mozart, he enriched the lightness of Italian music with a solid grasp of counterpoint.
(DIR) Post #9toKDPT1ZoI7StaEgC by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T20:00:09.020450Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@deorsum counterpoint and voice leading i absolutely do not understand at all despite having tried to understand them a couple times, but this is prob bc i'm still a piano brainlet. the only thing i really know is that in voice leading youre supposed to alter the inversions of chord shapes in-between playing them otherwise it sounds trash if you're using the same inversion
(DIR) Post #9toKkr0iBxyiRgHuUa by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-07T20:06:09.402915Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@augustus If you have the time, this 60 page article by Wegman (What Is Counterpoint?) explains the issue right from the beginning. TL;DR "counterpoint" was an invention the musicians used in response to a 13th century papal bull to justify their musical practices at the time.https://linx.prolatio.xyz/selif/wegman.pdf
(DIR) Post #9toKqhUgUH30fT5xT6 by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T20:07:15.069322Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@deorsum ya'll better not be using any fuckin tritones or else the pope is gonna flip his shit
(DIR) Post #9toL8AXHlNczf9dpNg by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-07T20:10:23.838264Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@augustus Wegman only posts part of the Bull, and I couldn't find a full translation anywhere. However, after some very painful searches through books of canon law, I managed to locate a full latin version, so I might as well post it.https://linx.prolatio.xyz/docta-sanctorum-patrum.txt
(DIR) Post #9toLIVZwNhcfp0oV0q by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-07T20:12:15.369616Z
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@augustus Sorry, the image to text was done awfully, the original pages are here.
(DIR) Post #9toLw66kV5zSPP2Lqq by sean@social.deadsuperhero.com
2020-04-07T20:19:21.982253Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@augustus @deorsum this is really fun to do, if you have an ear for it.I can't exactly 100% explain how one "knows" what notes to lead with or what motifs to introduce. It's kind of a symbiotic dance between voice and instrument. But if you can identify what steps the other person is on, you can do some really cool shit.
(DIR) Post #9todiH5mf7gBb58z7g by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-07T23:38:33.683640Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@augustus @deorsum I’ve read that and didn’t get that impression. Then I’ve read it in Russian to be sure. Several things to note:1. This is an in-between note drowned within long epistle chitchat, not some testament or autobigraphy2. Tchaikovsky was a homo3. I think “мучительные восторги” in the English text sounds kind of defamatory or sarcastic, but in the Russian it’s clearly a word of praise4. Tchaikovsky basically says that the music after Mozart isn’t caressing enough to his ear (remember again, that he was gay), so he as a musician though admits the power of the modern music, but finds it “too rough for him”. Well, I can’t imagine the author of Swan Lake to like Beethoven, do you? It seems perfectly understandable, that Tchaikovsky would like better the music of gay space harpsichord feudalism, all touchy-feely, with face powder and metre-long wigs.5. Some piece of Anglo had to cut the last two lines from the letter, where the author cancels himself: “Well, here I stop. I know that You and me value Mozart in different ways and that my singing hymns to him isn’t pleasing to You even a little bit.”48-19-1.jpg
(DIR) Post #9todmg47kpZ0CzT0wC by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-07T23:39:22.088263Z
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@deorsum @augustus Hello there… ［FFF］ Tasogare Otome x Amnesia …
(DIR) Post #9toeMrc2IgRQRhaGhc by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T23:45:57.601334Z
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@tija @deorsum was he really a shoot homo, i started to think that was just revisionism to generate historical homos based on hearsay
(DIR) Post #9toeW43NPkzldYl9SC by augustus@shitposter.club
2020-04-07T23:47:37.261229Z
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@tija @deorsum >gay space harpsichord feudalism
(DIR) Post #9toqWXN9bdUs1C0Byi by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T02:02:06.123230Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@deorsum @augustus > Add this to Tolstoy's comments on Shakespeare one can conclude that slavs have a deficience sense of aesthetics> aestheticsMeanwhile, what does “King Lear”, Shakespeare’s most praised work, starts with? Washing dirty clothes before the crowd and a humour worthy of a modern stand-up comedians. And it goes on. The unexplainable stupidity of the King, the unfunny jokes of Lear’s Fool (what Tolstoy scolds this work for) start to make sense, if you imagine an actual play in the conditions it was meant for. The theatre then was an entertainment akin to a reality show today. The troupe might be on the move so as to visit as many places as possible, and I’d like to point this fact, as it tells something about the size of the play. The initial version of the text (before it was ever printed for the masses) was probably shorter. Then it was expanded, after it became famous. And then was probably abridged for the cities, that couldn’t pay much (and for which there was no reason to stay for long and play for long). A piece of art isn’t something that you can frivolously extend or abridge. I am assured that Lear is not actually a tragedy, but rather a comedy and one for a simple mind. (Actually, how else could it become famous 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳’𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘯?). And that it why there are lots of puns based solely on the language. That’s why Fool’s jokes are dull. That’s why Lear can’t recognise Kent, that’s why his speech is utterly pompous and whatever meaningful he says drowns in that gibberish. He’s just senile idiot. That’s why Gloster wipes Lear’s hand and says “it smells of mortality” – as if Lear reeks like a decaying corpse. It’s a comedy for a simple mind, it was just very entertaining in its time, but such entertaining things were in abundance also later and still are in abundance now. Absence of anything comparable is what made critics put it on pedestal, seek read tragedy in what actually was planned as a comedy, an ideal of maternal love and whatnot.This all made me remember one thing. I like folk tales. Especially the long ones, with cunningly entwined plot. And in my childhood I had a book of them. In one such tale, a hero, a bogatyr, was ordered by a prince to investigate one suspicious woman, who was a witch. She lived in a gloomy part of the city, and the way there was very tricky, as well as to her house. Bogatyr’s wife had a dream that night, and before her husband went for investigation, she’s strictly forbidden him to go certain paths (she precisely described them) and told not to do certain things. However, the hero went head on and did everything his own way. And of course, he found himself in a big trouble later. “Why does the storyteller portrait the bogatyr as a stupid one? Shouldn’t he be brave, smart and all that?” — I thought, while gritting my teeth. It was only many years later, that I got through that thing. Some words hinted to me, that the original storyteller was a wandering one, probably a seller of trivial goods from his large basket on the back. Of course these kind of people were envious to the bogatyrs, who were always close to princes, ate well, slept well and were given everything for their heroic deeds. So, this storytelling makes sense, if you imagine the person telling it. But it takes you back some 400–500 years ago. (And yes, the classical ethos is always sung, and this tale was in prose, so definitely composed later.)tl;dr if that’s aesthetics, then Key & Peele is too. ［Commie］ Takamiya Nasuno Desu！ …
(DIR) Post #9toxZO23UN3Lb7RHvs by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T03:21:03.260161Z
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@augustus @deorsum Yes, he was. The suspicions were there since the 1920s, when his diaries from 1880s were published abroad. His later biography was written by his brother Modest, who was a homo too. They tried to keep it secret for as long as possible so that their friends and relatives could sleep well. During the Soviet time the gay stuff was cut out for obvious reasons. But if you just take one look at Tchaikovsky’s instagram of an epistle, you’d already get a knack that it’s some flaming gay stuff.Take for examplehttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/02/tchaikovsky-letters-saved-from-censors-reveal-secret-loves-homosexualityI decided to cross-check one passage from it and can vouch that it says the same in the Tchaikovsky archive.Links, if you need:https://books.google.com/books?id=oaNUDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=At+nine+o%E2%80%99clock+I+felt+like+going+for+a+walk+and+went+out.+Some+ruffiani&source=bl&ots=YLf559I6vL&sig=ACfU3U3HBjoAgrpPo-Qb9W7atq_XzrXbSA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl1evT6tfoAhVS-yoKHQ6xBksQ6AEwAHoECAsQKA#v=onepage&q=At%20nine%20o%E2%80%99clock%20I%20felt%20like%20going%20for%20a%20walk%20and%20went%20out.%20Some%20ruffiani&f=falsehttps://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Letter_6861586314870.png1586314888.pngtch.pngyour name 2016 hdrip 720p HC en…
(DIR) Post #9toxj6sg6yqPIegoXA by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T03:22:49.224542Z
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@augustus @deorsum The funny thing is that the contents of the letters is not google-searchable, so you have to know where exactly to look. 24.gif
(DIR) Post #9tp43eDOU92CCUYV96 by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-08T04:33:48.830735Z
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@tija Much of Tolstoy's essay is devoted to ridiculing King Lear, a sad irony since Tolstoy, when he came to the last station of his cross, had involuntarily turned into King Lear . A sophisticated Resenter will not bring forth Bertolt Brecht as true Marxist drama, or Paul Claudel as true Christian drama, in order to prefer either of them to Shakespeare. Yet Tolstoy's outcry has the poignance of his authentic moral outrage and all the authority of his own aesthetic splendor.Palpably, Tolstoy's essay-like his What Is Art? -is a disaster, prompting the serious question of how so great a writer could have been so mistaken. Disapprovingly, Tolstoy quotes as idolaters of Shakespeare a distinguished company that includes Goethe, Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Turgenev. He could have added Hegel, Stendhal, Pushkin, Manzoni, Heine, and scores of others, indeed virtually every major writer capable of reading, with a few unsavory exceptions like Voltaire. The less interesting aspect of Tolstoy's rebellion against the aesthetic is creative envy. There is a particular fury in Tolstoy's denial of an eminence shared by Shakespeare with Homer, a sharing that Tolstoy reserved for his own War and Peace. Much more interesting is Tolstoy's spiritual revulsion against the immoral and irreligious tragedy of King Lear. I prefer such a revulsion to any attempts to Christianize Shakespeare's deliberately pre-Christian drama, and Tolstoy is quite accurate in seeing that Shakespeare, as a dramatist, is neither a Christian nor a moralist.I remember standing in front of Titian's painting of the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo when it was shown in Washington, D.C. Appalled and overwhelmed, I could only nod agreement to the comment of my companion, the American painter Larry Day, that the picture had something like the power and effect of the final act of King Lear. The Titian was there in St. Petersburg for Tolstoy to see; I can recall no specific comment by him, but presumably he would have conceived Titian's image of that horror, the promised end, as well. What Is Art? discards not only Shakespeare but Dante, Beethoven, and Raphael. If one is Tolstoy, perhaps one can dispense with Shakespeare, but we owe something to Tolstoy for locating the true grounds of Shakespearean power and offense: freedom from moral and religious overdeterminations. Evidently Tolstoy did not mean this in any commonplace sense, since Greek tragedy, Milton, and Bach also failed the Tolstoyan test of popular simplicity that was passed by some works of Victor Hugo and of Dickens, by Harriet Beecher Stowe and some minor Dostoevsky, and by George Eliot's Adam Bede. These were examples of Christian and moral art, though "good universal art" was also acceptable in a curious secondary grouping that included Cervantes and Moliere. Tolstoy demands "the truth," and the trouble with Shakespeare, in Tolstoy's perspective, is that he was not interested in the truth.That certainly joins the issue: How relevant is Tolstoy's complaint? Is the center of the Western Canon a pragmatic exaltation of lies? George Bernard Shaw greatly admired What Is Art? and presumably preferred Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to Shakespeare in somewhat the same way that Tolstoy ranked Uncle Tom's Cabin above King Lear. But this kind of thinking is now drearily familiar to us; one of my younger colleagues told me she valued Alice Walker's Meridian over Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow because Pynchon lied and Walker incarnated the truth. With political correctness replacing religious rightness, we are back in Tolstoy's polemic against difficult art. And yet Shakespeare, as Tolstoy refused to see, is virtually unique in simultaneously manifesting both difficult and popular art. There, I suspect, was the true Shakespearean offense and the ultimate explanation of why and how Shakespeare centers the Canon. To this day, multiculturally, Shakespeare will hold almost any audience, upper or lower class. What burned its way into the canonical center was a mode of representation universally available as far as I can tell, give or take a few French naysayers.
(DIR) Post #9tpEifzdmI0b87KDiK by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T06:33:10.674451Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@deorsum > Much of Tolstoy's essay is devoted to ridiculing King LearI think that when you’re going to judge somebody, you look at their finest work. Or should I go and ridicule your way of thinking by the how artful you were pissing into swaddling clothes?> a sad irony since Tolstoy, when he came to the last station of his cross, had involuntarily turned into King Lear Except that Tolstoy did never turn senile and instead of yelling curses he only asked people to be left in peace.> A sophisticated Resenter will not bring forth Bertolt Brecht as true Marxist drama, or Paul Claudel as true Christian drama, in order to prefer either of them to Shakespeare. Yet Tolstoy's outcry has the poignance of his authentic moral outrage and all the authority of his own aesthetic splendor.Excuse me, but Tolstoy provided a typical sheet of quotations, that prove that Lear is commonly considered the ultimate Shakespeare’s masterpiece, or at least that it was up to 1897.> Palpably, Tolstoy's essay-like his What Is Art? -is a disasterIt’s visible, that you avoid touching the matter directly.> prompting the serious question of how so great a writer could have been so mistaken.I too have a serious question. And it sounds like “will I see a single argument in the following kilobytes of text?” (pft> Disapprovingly, Tolstoy quotes as idolaters of Shakespeare a distinguished company that includes Goethe, Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Turgenev.There is no one without a sin. Yes, Tolstoy indeed reprimands them for that, but he doesn’t revoke their titles of masters of art for that.> He could have added Hegel, Stendhal, Pushkin, Manzoni, Heine,He added Pushkin, did you read the source, nigga?> <thoughts>Ok. Thoughts are thoughts.> I prefer such a revulsion to any attempts to Christianize Shakespeare's deliberately pre-Christian drama,Tolstoy primarily reprimands the author for logical inconsistency. If that’s now means “to Christianize”…> <memories>Ok. Memories are memories.> What Is Art? discards not only Shakespeare but Dante, Beethoven, and Raphael.Mm? I don’t think he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t add this to his work: “These days I’m reading a very fine book of Volkelt. While pondering about the requirements to the moral aspect in works of art, the author says it straight, that to place any moral requirements to a work of art is wrong, and as a prove for that, he points to that if such a requirement would be allowed to be placed, then ‘Romeo and Juliet’ of Shakespeare and ‘Wilhelm Meister’ of Goethe wouldn’t fall under the definition of good art. And as both of those belong to the canon of art, thus such a requirement is unjust. And thus there has to be found such a definition for art, with which these works would fit it, so, instead of a requirement for morality, Volkelt places a requirement for significance (Bedeutungsvolles).” The excerpt above I’ve just translated myself, for I found a critical error in the Maude’s translation (1904)¹, and apparently, this translation is the only one in the open access. 1. Tolstoy, in the original Russian text² qualifies the book as “очень недурную”, here “очень” is equal to English “very”, and “недурную” literally equals “not bad”³, while actually is an old-fashioned way of saying “good”³, and may mean anything from “moderately/acceptably good” up to “fine”, “very nice”. That Tolstoy uses “very” points to us that his appraisal means “very good” (and not just averagely). This changes the meaning for an entire page in the English translation, where the book is named “ill-fated” and it reads like Tolstoy does not agree with the author, but rather opposes him.2. Maude transliterated the surname of Johannes Volkelt as Folgeldt for some reason. That Tolstoy means German philosopher Johanness Volkelt is confirmed by a page⁴ from Tolstoy’s collection of works. By the way, this is a part of epistle between Maude and Tolstoy, where Maude asks for clarifications. So apparently, there may be a better version. Somewhere.At this point I begin to understand where does this attitude to Tolstoy comes from. If that translating circulation has many more errors like that, then the essay of Tolstoy may be mistranslated to a big degree. Sasuga Anglos.This post has reached the character limit. ¹ Maude’s translation. The page on onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu, that hosts Maude’s works, links only to this version: https://archive.org/details/whatisart00tolsuoft/page/42/mode/1up² https://rvb.ru/tolstoy/01text/vol_15/01text/0327.htm (Scroll to part IV, then go down to the link in blue – that’s right where it starts. I confirm, that the text of that particular paragraph coincides with my scanned version.)³ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/недурной⁴ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/L._N._Tolstoy._All_in_90_volumes._Volume_70.pdf/page192-880px-L._N._Tolstoy._All_in_90_volumes._Volume_70.pdf.jpg
(DIR) Post #9tpGpflzC92KNlP02y by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-08T06:56:53.764094Z
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@tija Fair enough since I'm not sure if Bloom spoke Russian at all. But the issue of aesthetics has not been resolved. As Lichtenberg said, when the book his the head and makes a hollow sound, it's not always the fault of the book.
(DIR) Post #9tpHmglT9RjkXkIkjo by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-08T07:07:35.400064Z
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@tija This loss of meaning via translation is one of the primary reason why I haven't read a word of Tolstoy until I'm fluent in Russian tbh. Not proud of it, but prefer it to the alternative.
(DIR) Post #9tpN7LlIvvwNFytbEW by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T08:07:18.701612Z
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@deorsum In continuation to the answer to> What Is Art? discards not only Shakespeare but Dante, Beethoven, and Raphael.At this point I’m not sure whether it has a purpose to continue replying, since decontaminating your (Anglos’) translation is out of my plans for today, but suppose that I’m doing this not of the feeling of friendship, gratitude or some meaningless bullshit like that, but for my own pleasure.Tolstoy may cancel Shakespeare, but for the rest of the folk you named it meant rather to *the people* who admire them blindly. In part X, where Tolstoy speaks of contemporary poets, he admits, that he may be just not understanding something in their art, and he draws (figuratively) a spiral, where he places himself and people of his education time in the middle, saying that on a lower level of understanding there is entire community of workers as well as many of the people, who do not work, that may not understand “those works of art, that we find beautiful: poems of our favourite artists: Gooethe, Schiller, Hugo, novels of Dickens, music of Beethoven, Chopin, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Vinci et al.”I’ve just Ctrl+F’d the entire work and couldn’t find a single place where Tolstoy speaks bad of Dante, Beethoven or Raphael or denies them as the creators of art. From that I conclude that either you’ve been reading a poor translation again, or you try to put bad words in the mouth of Tolstoy.> <some long passage that I struggle to characterise>Ok.> Tolstoy demands "the truth," and the trouble with Shakespeare, in Tolstoy's perspective, is that he was not interested in the truth.I did another Ctrl+F for the Russian root of the word “truth” and couldn’t find, where Tolstoy would demand “truth” from art or from Shakespeare. The closest thing to what you say is that paragraph: at [113] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27726/27726-h/27726-h.htmAnd I must say it’s quite bold to shorten this down to “demands ‘truth’”. > "But," I shall be asked, "what do you understand by the word's religious essence of the drama? May not what you are demanding for the drama, religious instruction, or didactics, be called 'tendency,' a thing incompatible with true art?" I reply that by the religious essence of art I understand not the direct inculcation of any religious truths in an artistic guise, Please note this.> and not an allegorical demonstration of these truths, And this too, please note.> but the exhibition of a definite view of life corresponding to the highest religious understanding of a given time, which, serving as the motive for the composition of the drama, penetrates, to the knowledge of the author, through all of his work. So it has always been with true art, and so it is with every true artist in general and especially the dramatist. Hence—as it was when the drama was a serious thing, and as it should be according to the essence of the matter—that man alone can write a drama who has something to say to men, and something which is of the greatest importance for them: about man's relation to God, to the Universe, to the All, the Eternal, the Infinite.Now that is a quite literal demand. Oh, no, I’m out of characters again.
(DIR) Post #9tpOwMvAU2GdZgOuvI by deorsum@pleroma.prolatio.xyz
2020-04-08T08:27:45.543401Z
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@tija You get it now. Tolstoy mounted an (Christian) attack on the scandalous morals of pre-Christian Britain depicted in Shakespeare. Unfortunately this has no connection with the aesthetics power of the play, which cannot be denied. So Tolstoy's aesthetics sensibility is still up in the air, unfortunately.
(DIR) Post #9tpPr90Wt04uvdytyi by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T08:37:59.701362Z
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@deorsum They say there is no stopping on the suffering train, so…> and the trouble with Shakespeare, in Tolstoy's perspective, is that he was not interested in the truth.I think that Tolstoy’s perspective is not that Shakespeare isn’t a author of a particular sort, but that people misattribute that sort to him. The key to that may be found in the “What is Art?”, part XII:The classical tragedians were once considered good, and modern critics find them as such. Dante was esteemed a great poet, Raphael a great painter, Bach a great musician, and the critics, lacking a criterion with which they would be able to separate good pieces of art from bad ones, and not only do they consider these artists great, but regard *all* (Emphasised by Tolstoy — Tija’s note) their productions as great and exemplary. Nothing has contributed, and still contributes, so much to the perversion of art as these authorities set up by criticism. A man produces a work of art, like every true artist expressing in his own peculiar manner a feeling that he has experienced. Most people are infected by the artist’s feeling; and his work becomes known. Then criticism, discussing the artist, says that the work is not bad, but all the same the artist is not a Dante, nor a Shakespeare, nor a Goethe, nor a Raphael, nor what Beethoven was in his last period. And the young artist, listening to such judgements, starts to imitate those, who were set before him as examples, and he creates not only weak, but false, fake compositions. Thus, for example, our Pushkin writes his short poems, “Evgeniy Onegin”, “The Gypsies”, and his stories — works all of different value, but all true art. But then, under the influence of false criticism extolling Shakespeare, he writes “Boris Godunoff”, a cold, brain-spun work, and this production is lauded by the critics, set up as a model, and imitations of it appear: “Minin” by Ostrovsky, and “Tsar Boris” by Alexey Tolstoy, and such imitations of imitations crowd all literatures with most insignificant, valueless productions. The chief harm done by the critics is this, that themselves lacking the capacity to be infected by art (and that is the characteristic of all critics; for did they not lack this they could not attempt the impossible the interpretation of works of art), they pay most attention to, and eulogise, brain-spun, made up works, and set these up as models worthy of imitation. That is the reason they so confidently extol, in literature, the Greek tragedians, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe (almost all he wrote), and, among recent writers, Zola and Ibsen; in music, Beethoven’s last period, and Wagner. To justify their praise of these brain-spun, made up works, they devise entire theories (of which the famous theory of beauty is one); and not only dull but also talented people compose works in strict deference to these theories; and often even real artists, doing violence to their genius, submit to them. Every false work extolled by the critics serves as a door through which the hypocrites of art at once crowd in. Three paragraphs above were taken from the same translation of Maude but edited by yours truly to steer the text back to the original. > That certainly joins the issue: How relevant is Tolstoy's complaint? Is the center of the Western Canon a pragmatic exaltation of lies? George Bernard Shaw greatly admired What Is Art? and presumably preferred Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to Shakespeare in somewhat the same way that Tolstoy ranked Uncle Tom's Cabin above King Lear. But this kind of thinking is now drearily familiar to us; one of my younger colleagues told me she valued Alice Walker's Meridian over Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow because Pynchon lied and Walker incarnated the truth.You want to trick me into saying “Ok. Tastes are tastes”, but you cannot lump together one place, where a person speaks of his of her tastes and other places where they speak of their position on the matter what is right™ and their demands to how it should be™.> With political correctness replacing religious rightness, we are back in Tolstoy's polemic against difficult art.I think that about 100 kilowords above, there was a quote from Tolstoy where he speaks approvingly of Volkelt, and that Volkelt was saying that it’d be a bad idea to apply norms of morality to art.Lord have mercy, we’re out of characters again!
(DIR) Post #9tpRlbtkl3vchcIheq by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T08:59:24.343598Z
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@deorsum Wanna make a bet who got more mutes? > And yet Shakespeare, as Tolstoy refused to see, is virtually unique in simultaneously manifesting both difficult and popular art. To me it looks like a hungry writer for theatre had really great moods, during which he decided to stuff in the work as much as possible: high or low, funny or not, touching or mediocre. I don’t deny that there are grains of something exceptional in Shakespeare, but you won’t call a raincoat any rag with a nice buckle.> <thoughts>Ok. Thoughts are thoughts.> You get it now. Tolstoy mounted an (Christian) attackI don’t find quite correct the use of term “Christian” here, because “Christian” means one thing to me, another thing to you, to Tolstoy himself it might mean some third thing, and his contemporaries would have something fourth.> on the scandalous morals of pre-Christian Britain depicted in Shakespeare.Where did Tolstoy say “scandalous morals”? You put it like if Tolstoy was offended by immorality where in fact is was just irritated by hollowness.> Unfortunately this has no connection with the aesthetics power of the play, which cannot be denied.Some say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some watch other inspired beholders.
(DIR) Post #9tpSZY2JOIMbCi7FpY by georgia@dickkickextremist.xyz
2020-04-08T09:08:29.247654Z
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@tijaI like chaucer@deorsum
(DIR) Post #9tpVvca1TgHdWt6KLQ by tija@pleroma.uwah.moe
2020-04-08T09:46:02.701376Z
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@georgia @deorsum I watch Heya camp. Well I also have a book of Canterbury tales, but I don’t know when I’m going to read it. Untitled.gif