#tseliot — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tseliot, aggregated by home.social.
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Jellicle Cats come out tonight,
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright —
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, “The Song of the Jellicles” (1939)More about this quote: wist.info/eliot-t-s/5203/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #tseliot #cats #cats #gathering #moon #night
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From 2020: A father's passing in '#Pandemic Diary: Just a Box of Rain' by
@markaldrich ( https://wp.me/p49Ewg-3HW ). #Coronavirus ended my father's life. Here is an attempt at a tribute to him, son to dad. #COVID19 #TSEliot #GratefulDead #CapeCod #NewPaltz #family #love -
En algún lugar, T.S. Eliot recomienda que toda nueva generación debe traducir a sus clásicos, así que me di a la tarea de traducir Ballad of a Thin Man de Bob Dylan, en una muy personal y peculiar versión, ahí va… #TSEliot #BobDylan #BalladOfAThinMan
https://raulvalencia.wordpress.com/2022/02/23/balada-nengo-ballad-thin-man/
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45 years ago today, #AndrewLloydWebber's musical "Cats" (based on poetry by #TSEliot) directed by Trevor Nunn, opens at the New London Theatre in the West End, London; runs for 8,949 performances.
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45 years ago today, #AndrewLloydWebber's musical "Cats" (based on poetry by #TSEliot) directed by Trevor Nunn, opens at the New London Theatre in the West End, London; runs for 8,949 performances.
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Happy #Caturday!
T.S. Eliot's 1939 collection of whimsical light poems, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, is entirely dedicated to felines and served as the basis for the musical Cats.
#poetry #poem #kitty #cat #cats #poet #eliot #tseliot #catsOfMastodon #books #reading #literature #bookstodon @bookstodon #books #books #booksky #booktok #bookwyrm #bookstagram #feline #today #cartoon #catsOfFediverse
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Happy #Caturday!
T.S. Eliot's 1939 collection of whimsical light poems, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, is entirely dedicated to felines and served as the basis for the musical Cats.
#poetry #poem #kitty #cat #cats #poet #eliot #tseliot #catsOfMastodon #books #reading #literature #bookstodon @bookstodon #books #books #booksky #booktok #bookwyrm #bookstagram #feline #today #cartoon #catsOfFediverse
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The cruelest violences are often spoken in the language of care.
— Animo ✨
https://www.animoreflectiveintelligence.com#middleeastwar #lebanon #i̇ran #tseliot #poetry #peace #straitsofhormuz #palestine
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The cruelest violences are often spoken in the language of care.
— Animo ✨
https://www.animoreflectiveintelligence.com#middleeastwar #lebanon #i̇ran #tseliot #poetry #peace #straitsofhormuz #palestine
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Some powers arrive speaking of order and leave only flame.
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Some powers arrive speaking of order and leave only flame.
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There are moments when terror arrives wearing a sacred outline.
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There are moments when terror arrives wearing a sacred outline.
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#TodayIFoundOut that the Heaviside layer, the name for heaven in the #Cats #musical, is an actual part of the earth's atmosphere. Remarkably, it is an ionized layer that reflects radio waves back down to the surface, allowing for long-distance radio broadcasts before satellites were a thing. It would have been big news in the 1930's when #TSEliot was writing his original cat poetry. Perhaps this is why the #JellicleCats believe this is where they will be sent back to earth and reincarnated?
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#TodayIFoundOut that the Heaviside layer, the name for heaven in the #Cats #musical, is an actual part of the earth's atmosphere. Remarkably, it is an ionized layer that reflects radio waves back down to the surface, allowing for long-distance radio broadcasts before satellites were a thing. It would have been big news in the 1930's when #TSEliot was writing his original cat poetry. Perhaps this is why the #JellicleCats believe this is where they will be sent back to earth and reincarnated?
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𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑒̀ 𝑖𝑙 𝑝𝑖𝑢̀ 𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑖 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑖: 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎
𝐿𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑎̀ 𝑑𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑎 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎 𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑎, 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑎
𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑜 𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜, 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑜𝑙𝑎
𝐿𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑖 𝑐𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑎 𝑝𝑖𝑜𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑎 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑒.T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Traduzione di Mario Praz -
Aprile è il mese più crudele; fa nascere
i lillà dalla terra addormentata, e mescola
memoria e desideri … https://cctm.website/t-s-eliot-aprile/T. S. Eliot
da La Terra desolata, Einaudi, 1963
#aprile #tseliot #poesia #cctmwebsite #anoipiaceleggere #leggere
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The title is taken from TS Eliot’s The Waste Land - and he took it from The Tempest by Shakespeare …
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”(From The Waste Land)
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_new/116177713014688778
Features essays on #humanism by many folks, including #tseliot.
Another 'production' of mine. Did you read it? Inquiring minds want to know, even if you come across this years later.
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Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece – BBC
James Joyce met publisher Sylvia Beach in 1920 shortly after he moved to ParisUlysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
1 February 2022.
By Colm Kelpie, BBC News, NI
In the spring of 1921, Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach boasted about her plans to publish a novel she deemed a masterpiece that would be “ranked among the classics in English literature”.
“Ulysses is going to make my place famous,” she wrote of James Joyce’s acclaimed and challenging novel, written over seven years in three cities depicting the events of a single day in Dublin.
And it did.
On 2 February 1922, Beach published the first book edition of Ulysses, just in time for Joyce’s 40th birthday.
Stylistically dense in parts, it tells the stories of three central characters – Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly – and is now celebrated as one of the world’s most influential texts.
‘Tosh’
TS Eliot, writing in 1923, believed Ulysses was “the most important expression which the present age has found”.
But the path to publication was not a smooth one. The novel sparked controversy and was greeted with revulsion by many – even among some in the literary community.
Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookshop was a haven for American expatriates during the 1920s and 1930sVirginia Woolf described it as “tosh”.
Parts had been serialised by US magazine Little Review in 1920, resulting in an obscenity trial that concluded with the editors being fined and ordered to cease further publication. It was also censured in Great Britain.
Beach, the owner of Shakespeare & Company on the Rue Dupuytren, was determined to have it published in book form, which she did, bankrolled in part by her own money on the promise of subscribers.
Writing about the task at the time, she said she had to “put every single centime aside to pay” the book’s printer.
Prof Keri Walsh, outside the modern incarnation of Shakespeare & Company, in ParisProf Keri Walsh, director of the Institute of Irish Studies at New York’s Fordham University, says Beach’s decision to publish turned her into a “culture-hero of the avant-garde.”
“There was a sense that people knew that this was going to be one of the defining books of modernism, so she understood that she would assure her own place in literary history by being the publisher of it,” Prof Walsh tells BBC News NI.
Ulysses: ‘Don’t read the criticism, read the book’Joyce and Beach first met in 1920, not long after he moved to Paris.
He had long left Ireland in self-imposed exile, living in Trieste, Zurich and the French capital.
Beach described that meeting as a powerful moment, says Prof Walsh.
“Joyce was very tired at this point. He had spent so much time fighting to finish Ulysses, and get through [World War One] and survive, he felt she could provide some sort of stability and support for him and his family,” she adds.
“She was much more than a publisher – a banker, agent, administrator, friend of the family. For a very long time that relationship worked well.”
But following disputes over publishing rights, the relationship between Joyce and Beach soured and the latter ultimately ceded the novel’s rights, writes Prof Walsh in The Letters of Sylvia Beach.
Sylvia Beach eventually ceded the publishing rights to Ulysses after her relationship with Joyce souredRandom House published Ulysses in 1934 after the US ban on publication was overturned the previous year.
That marketed it to a bigger audience, but it was 20 years before writers began to “claim” Joyce, says John McCourt, professor of English at the University of Macerata in Italy.
While Joyce was deeply frustrated by the reception Ulysses had received, he was equally unrelenting, adds Prof McCourt.
“He wouldn’t change a comma to make it more acceptable to whatever public taste deemed was OK.
“He saw himself becoming a cause celebre and played it for all it was worth.”
Tips for reading (or attempting to read) Ulysses
Prof John McCourt, University of Macerata, Italy
Nobody is fully prepared to read the book.
If you know something about music that would be a big help.
If you know something about Ireland and its history, that would help.
Don’t try and read it too quickly. Read it out loud as it does come alive.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
#100Years #BBC #BBCNews #Bookshop #ColmKelpie #February21922Published #From2022 #JamesJoyce #LeopoldBloom #LiteraryMasterpiece #MollyBloom #Paris #Publication #PublishedIn1934InUS #Publisher #RandomHouse #ReadingUlysses #ShakespeareCompany #StephenDedalus #SylviaBeach #TSEliot #Ulysses -
Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece – BBC
James Joyce met publisher Sylvia Beach in 1920 shortly after he moved to ParisUlysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
1 February 2022.
By Colm Kelpie, BBC News, NI
In the spring of 1921, Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach boasted about her plans to publish a novel she deemed a masterpiece that would be “ranked among the classics in English literature”.
“Ulysses is going to make my place famous,” she wrote of James Joyce’s acclaimed and challenging novel, written over seven years in three cities depicting the events of a single day in Dublin.
And it did.
On 2 February 1922, Beach published the first book edition of Ulysses, just in time for Joyce’s 40th birthday.
Stylistically dense in parts, it tells the stories of three central characters – Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly – and is now celebrated as one of the world’s most influential texts.
‘Tosh’
TS Eliot, writing in 1923, believed Ulysses was “the most important expression which the present age has found”.
But the path to publication was not a smooth one. The novel sparked controversy and was greeted with revulsion by many – even among some in the literary community.
Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookshop was a haven for American expatriates during the 1920s and 1930sVirginia Woolf described it as “tosh”.
Parts had been serialised by US magazine Little Review in 1920, resulting in an obscenity trial that concluded with the editors being fined and ordered to cease further publication. It was also censured in Great Britain.
Beach, the owner of Shakespeare & Company on the Rue Dupuytren, was determined to have it published in book form, which she did, bankrolled in part by her own money on the promise of subscribers.
Writing about the task at the time, she said she had to “put every single centime aside to pay” the book’s printer.
Prof Keri Walsh, outside the modern incarnation of Shakespeare & Company, in ParisProf Keri Walsh, director of the Institute of Irish Studies at New York’s Fordham University, says Beach’s decision to publish turned her into a “culture-hero of the avant-garde.”
“There was a sense that people knew that this was going to be one of the defining books of modernism, so she understood that she would assure her own place in literary history by being the publisher of it,” Prof Walsh tells BBC News NI.
Ulysses: ‘Don’t read the criticism, read the book’Joyce and Beach first met in 1920, not long after he moved to Paris.
He had long left Ireland in self-imposed exile, living in Trieste, Zurich and the French capital.
Beach described that meeting as a powerful moment, says Prof Walsh.
“Joyce was very tired at this point. He had spent so much time fighting to finish Ulysses, and get through [World War One] and survive, he felt she could provide some sort of stability and support for him and his family,” she adds.
“She was much more than a publisher – a banker, agent, administrator, friend of the family. For a very long time that relationship worked well.”
But following disputes over publishing rights, the relationship between Joyce and Beach soured and the latter ultimately ceded the novel’s rights, writes Prof Walsh in The Letters of Sylvia Beach.
Sylvia Beach eventually ceded the publishing rights to Ulysses after her relationship with Joyce souredRandom House published Ulysses in 1934 after the US ban on publication was overturned the previous year.
That marketed it to a bigger audience, but it was 20 years before writers began to “claim” Joyce, says John McCourt, professor of English at the University of Macerata in Italy.
While Joyce was deeply frustrated by the reception Ulysses had received, he was equally unrelenting, adds Prof McCourt.
“He wouldn’t change a comma to make it more acceptable to whatever public taste deemed was OK.
“He saw himself becoming a cause celebre and played it for all it was worth.”
Tips for reading (or attempting to read) Ulysses
Prof John McCourt, University of Macerata, Italy
Nobody is fully prepared to read the book.
If you know something about music that would be a big help.
If you know something about Ireland and its history, that would help.
Don’t try and read it too quickly. Read it out loud as it does come alive.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
#100Years #BBC #BBCNews #Bookshop #ColmKelpie #February21922Published #From2022 #JamesJoyce #LeopoldBloom #LiteraryMasterpiece #MollyBloom #Paris #Publication #PublishedIn1934InUS #Publisher #RandomHouse #ReadingUlysses #ShakespeareCompany #StephenDedalus #SylviaBeach #TSEliot #Ulysses -
Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece – BBC
James Joyce met publisher Sylvia Beach in 1920 shortly after he moved to ParisUlysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
1 February 2022.
By Colm Kelpie, BBC News, NI
In the spring of 1921, Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach boasted about her plans to publish a novel she deemed a masterpiece that would be “ranked among the classics in English literature”.
“Ulysses is going to make my place famous,” she wrote of James Joyce’s acclaimed and challenging novel, written over seven years in three cities depicting the events of a single day in Dublin.
And it did.
On 2 February 1922, Beach published the first book edition of Ulysses, just in time for Joyce’s 40th birthday.
Stylistically dense in parts, it tells the stories of three central characters – Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly – and is now celebrated as one of the world’s most influential texts.
‘Tosh’
TS Eliot, writing in 1923, believed Ulysses was “the most important expression which the present age has found”.
But the path to publication was not a smooth one. The novel sparked controversy and was greeted with revulsion by many – even among some in the literary community.
Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookshop was a haven for American expatriates during the 1920s and 1930sVirginia Woolf described it as “tosh”.
Parts had been serialised by US magazine Little Review in 1920, resulting in an obscenity trial that concluded with the editors being fined and ordered to cease further publication. It was also censured in Great Britain.
Beach, the owner of Shakespeare & Company on the Rue Dupuytren, was determined to have it published in book form, which she did, bankrolled in part by her own money on the promise of subscribers.
Writing about the task at the time, she said she had to “put every single centime aside to pay” the book’s printer.
Prof Keri Walsh, outside the modern incarnation of Shakespeare & Company, in ParisProf Keri Walsh, director of the Institute of Irish Studies at New York’s Fordham University, says Beach’s decision to publish turned her into a “culture-hero of the avant-garde.”
“There was a sense that people knew that this was going to be one of the defining books of modernism, so she understood that she would assure her own place in literary history by being the publisher of it,” Prof Walsh tells BBC News NI.
Ulysses: ‘Don’t read the criticism, read the book’Joyce and Beach first met in 1920, not long after he moved to Paris.
He had long left Ireland in self-imposed exile, living in Trieste, Zurich and the French capital.
Beach described that meeting as a powerful moment, says Prof Walsh.
“Joyce was very tired at this point. He had spent so much time fighting to finish Ulysses, and get through [World War One] and survive, he felt she could provide some sort of stability and support for him and his family,” she adds.
“She was much more than a publisher – a banker, agent, administrator, friend of the family. For a very long time that relationship worked well.”
But following disputes over publishing rights, the relationship between Joyce and Beach soured and the latter ultimately ceded the novel’s rights, writes Prof Walsh in The Letters of Sylvia Beach.
Sylvia Beach eventually ceded the publishing rights to Ulysses after her relationship with Joyce souredRandom House published Ulysses in 1934 after the US ban on publication was overturned the previous year.
That marketed it to a bigger audience, but it was 20 years before writers began to “claim” Joyce, says John McCourt, professor of English at the University of Macerata in Italy.
While Joyce was deeply frustrated by the reception Ulysses had received, he was equally unrelenting, adds Prof McCourt.
“He wouldn’t change a comma to make it more acceptable to whatever public taste deemed was OK.
“He saw himself becoming a cause celebre and played it for all it was worth.”
Tips for reading (or attempting to read) Ulysses
Prof John McCourt, University of Macerata, Italy
Nobody is fully prepared to read the book.
If you know something about music that would be a big help.
If you know something about Ireland and its history, that would help.
Don’t try and read it too quickly. Read it out loud as it does come alive.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Ulysses: Celebrating 100 years of a literary masterpiece
#100Years #BBC #BBCNews #Bookshop #ColmKelpie #February21922Published #From2022 #JamesJoyce #LeopoldBloom #LiteraryMasterpiece #MollyBloom #Paris #Publication #PublishedIn1934InUS #Publisher #RandomHouse #ReadingUlysses #ShakespeareCompany #StephenDedalus #SylviaBeach #TSEliot #Ulysses -
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Kalifornia, echt amerikanisch.
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Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Kalifornia, echt amerikanisch.
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"West End Girls" is a song by the English #synthpop duo #PetShopBoys. Written by #NeilTennant and #ChrisLowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in #London, is inspired partly by #TSEliot's poem #TheWasteLand (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fcSzKVzxI -
"West End Girls" is a song by the English #synthpop duo #PetShopBoys. Written by #NeilTennant and #ChrisLowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in #London, is inspired partly by #TSEliot's poem #TheWasteLand (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fcSzKVzxI -
"West End Girls" is a song by the English #synthpop duo #PetShopBoys. Written by #NeilTennant and #ChrisLowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in #London, is inspired partly by #TSEliot's poem #TheWasteLand (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fcSzKVzxI -
"West End Girls" is a song by the English #synthpop duo #PetShopBoys. Written by #NeilTennant and #ChrisLowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in #London, is inspired partly by #TSEliot's poem #TheWasteLand (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fcSzKVzxI -
"West End Girls" is a song by the English #synthpop duo #PetShopBoys. Written by #NeilTennant and #ChrisLowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in #London, is inspired partly by #TSEliot's poem #TheWasteLand (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fcSzKVzxI -
"I do not wish to wish these things". Doesn't this basically mean: I wish I was someone other than I am? Eliot seems to wish to efface his own soul so as not to go against what is expected of him
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"I do not wish to wish these things". Doesn't this basically mean: I wish I was someone other than I am? Eliot seems to wish to efface his own soul so as not to go against what is expected of him
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The stairs the poet climbs in the 3rd Ash-Wednesday poem are a Purgatory: below he sees a devil in the fetid air, and above a window and a pastoral scene; "I am not worthy" he says, "but speak the word only."
I think we have more "dissembling" here. The poet feels bold enough to speak and yet feels unworthy. He is not telling us, or is not yet able to express, how he really feels about himself and his own creative powers.
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The stairs the poet climbs in the 3rd Ash-Wednesday poem are a Purgatory: below he sees a devil in the fetid air, and above a window and a pastoral scene; "I am not worthy" he says, "but speak the word only."
I think we have more "dissembling" here. The poet feels bold enough to speak and yet feels unworthy. He is not telling us, or is not yet able to express, how he really feels about himself and his own creative powers.
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"... And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion..."
In the 2nd of Eliot's Ash-Wednesday poems again the theme of resignation after a deed is done; the deeds of mortals are offered up for judgement and then forgotten, just as mortals are to be forgotten once they are gone, after their bones are scattered. The immortality of the soul has nothing to do with the vanity of earthly existence; the human form, now finished with, can remain dissembled
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"... And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion..."
In the 2nd of Eliot's Ash-Wednesday poems again the theme of resignation after a deed is done; the deeds of mortals are offered up for judgement and then forgotten, just as mortals are to be forgotten once they are gone, after their bones are scattered. The immortality of the soul has nothing to do with the vanity of earthly existence; the human form, now finished with, can remain dissembled
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"Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow" (T. S. Eliot, from "The Hollow Men")
I'm not at all confident that I understand what Eliot meant by these lines, but it seems to me that this is a poem about being stuck in "the shadow;" the whole world becomes a shadow, a dark and grim place, when people have ceased to believe that their ideas can become reality, or that their actions can produce meaningful results.
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"Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow" (T. S. Eliot, from "The Hollow Men")
I'm not at all confident that I understand what Eliot meant by these lines, but it seems to me that this is a poem about being stuck in "the shadow;" the whole world becomes a shadow, a dark and grim place, when people have ceased to believe that their ideas can become reality, or that their actions can produce meaningful results.
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"The Fire Sermon" from T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is like a painting: bleak details of city life with the wide Thames flowing through the middle of it.
I don't know if anyone can relate but some poems just strike me more visually than others
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"The Fire Sermon" from T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is like a painting: bleak details of city life with the wide Thames flowing through the middle of it.
I don't know if anyone can relate but some poems just strike me more visually than others
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"A Game of Chess" in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" presents a world full of chatter and little more. The wind under the door and other people's business needn't occupy our attention and yet they do.
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"A Game of Chess" in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" presents a world full of chatter and little more. The wind under the door and other people's business needn't occupy our attention and yet they do.
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"And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust." (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land)
Because it's not the past that should trouble us, or the future that should frighten us; it is the present moment which slips through our fingers like sand
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"And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust." (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land)
Because it's not the past that should trouble us, or the future that should frighten us; it is the present moment which slips through our fingers like sand
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How do cultural objects change who we are?
From Forces of Destiny by Christopher Bollas pg 37-38:
And now and then we will be quite transformed by the uncanny wedding of our idiom and an object meeting up at just the right time. One late afternoon in the summer of 1972, I heard a performance of one of Hindmith’s viola sonata in a small church in New England. It immediately served to process a feature of my idiom, and this occasion sponsored vivid and intense feelings and ideas which lifted me into the next moments of my life. Shall we ever have the means to analyse that? Why that particular work?
There are four aspects of this which I think it’s important to untangle:
- “the uncanny wedding of our idiom and an object”
- the timing of their meeting
- the experiences which are produced
- the capacity of those experiences to move us forward in our becoming who we are
The most powerful experiences of cultural objects come when these four aspects are in alignment. I stumbled across T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets at a particularly bleak time in my life and there was something I dimly perceived in my existence (“not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness…”) which I could see more acutely after reading Little Gidding for the first time. That each moment could somehow be a home if only I could relate to it with sufficient care. That some moments bring higher, fuller experiences which I needed to be more disciplined in order to be able to receive. To see it made made it an object of reflection and exploration. It enabled me to elaborate myself in relation to it and find other objects to help me explore it. There was something latent in how I was trying to make sense of my existence (my idiom) which suddenly found expression through my engagement with the poem (my object). But that meeting came at a critical juncture, a ‘fateful moment’ to use the lingo of biographical sociology, which meant that it me on a new course.
I wonder however what a mundane sociology of these experiences would look like. One attuned to the scaffolding which makes such meetings possible. In my case I’d spent the previous year circling round Rilke with a sense I saw something in there which couldn’t reach in the same way. Or the blogging through which I tried to identify self-states which could be imbued with some reality by sharing with the Big Other before they came to elaborated in a way that felt coherent to me. Or even the whole problematic of presence underpinning how I received Little Gidding which rested on a whole gamut of therapeutic, spiritual and philosophical sources in a melange I don’t think I’d realised until now I’d been constructing for many years. The idiom has to be saturated with latent meaning that can burst out into a new expression at a moment of experienced fullness. It’s not created by the new object but rather facilitated by it.
You can’t choose cultural objects to solve a problem. Indeed if you’re relating to these objects to do something it will almost certainly blunt the possibility of resonance. There’s a subtle dialectic here in which a movement takes a more definitive form through these fateful encounters rather than being created by them. There’s a risk that, much as with explaining the lived life, we miss the subtle grounds for transformation if we get too preoccupied with the observable transformation itself. There was a grammar which pre-existed it within and through which change became possible. That’s where sociology can contribute something meaningful to the psychoanalysis of personal change through cultural objects.
#art #change #christopherBollas #culturalObjects #literature #music #TSEliot
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How do cultural objects change who we are?
From Forces of Destiny by Christopher Bollas pg 37-38:
And now and then we will be quite transformed by the uncanny wedding of our idiom and an object meeting up at just the right time. One late afternoon in the summer of 1972, I heard a performance of one of Hindmith’s viola sonata in a small church in New England. It immediately served to process a feature of my idiom, and this occasion sponsored vivid and intense feelings and ideas which lifted me into the next moments of my life. Shall we ever have the means to analyse that? Why that particular work?
There are four aspects of this which I think it’s important to untangle:
- “the uncanny wedding of our idiom and an object”
- the timing of their meeting
- the experiences which are produced
- the capacity of those experiences to move us forward in our becoming who we are
The most powerful experiences of cultural objects come when these four aspects are in alignment. I stumbled across T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets at a particularly bleak time in my life and there was something I dimly perceived in my existence (“not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness…”) which I could see more acutely after reading Little Gidding for the first time. That each moment could somehow be a home if only I could relate to it with sufficient care. That some moments bring higher, fuller experiences which I needed to be more disciplined in order to be able to receive. To see it made made it an object of reflection and exploration. It enabled me to elaborate myself in relation to it and find other objects to help me explore it. There was something latent in how I was trying to make sense of my existence (my idiom) which suddenly found expression through my engagement with the poem (my object). But that meeting came at a critical juncture, a ‘fateful moment’ to use the lingo of biographical sociology, which meant that it me on a new course.
Wyndham Lewis – Portrait of T. S. EliotI wonder however what a mundane sociology of these experiences would look like. One attuned to the scaffolding which makes such meetings possible. In my case I’d spent the previous year circling round Rilke with a sense I saw something in there which couldn’t reach in the same way. Or the blogging through which I tried to identify self-states which could be imbued with some reality by sharing with the Big Other before they came to elaborated in a way that felt coherent to me. Or even the whole problematic of presence underpinning how I received Little Gidding which rested on a whole gamut of therapeutic, spiritual and philosophical sources in a melange I don’t think I’d realised until now I’d been constructing for many years. The idiom has to be saturated with latent meaning that can burst out into a new expression at a moment of experienced fullness. It’s not created by the new object but rather facilitated by it.
You can’t choose cultural objects to solve a problem. Indeed if you’re relating to these objects to do something it will almost certainly blunt the possibility of resonance. There’s a subtle dialectic here in which a movement takes a more definitive form through these fateful encounters rather than being created by them. There’s a risk that, much as with explaining the lived life, we miss the subtle grounds for transformation if we get too preoccupied with the observable transformation itself. There was a grammar which pre-existed it within and through which change became possible. That’s where sociology can contribute something meaningful to the psychoanalysis of personal change through cultural objects.
#art #change #christopherBollas #culturalObjects #literature #music #TSEliot
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"I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids / sprouting despondently at area gates." (T. S. Eliot, Morning at the Window)
Gates enclose while souls continue to grow; a picture of a world whose rigid boundaries are tragically incompatible with the flourishing of a human soul
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"I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids / sprouting despondently at area gates." (T. S. Eliot, Morning at the Window)
Gates enclose while souls continue to grow; a picture of a world whose rigid boundaries are tragically incompatible with the flourishing of a human soul
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"The conscience of a blackened street / Impatient to assume the world." (T.S. Eliot, Preludes)
The way a street waits silently at night for the morning traffic; the way a writer is, by definition, silent when not writing, waiting for whatever next comes up to be assumed.
Eliot often struggled with his writing, doubting his abilities, so this image of a silent yet impatient street seems very apt
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"The conscience of a blackened street / Impatient to assume the world." (T.S. Eliot, Preludes)
The way a street waits silently at night for the morning traffic; the way a writer is, by definition, silent when not writing, waiting for whatever next comes up to be assumed.
Eliot often struggled with his writing, doubting his abilities, so this image of a silent yet impatient street seems very apt
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Works by James “B.V.” Thomson – “The City of Dreadful Night” & “Satires & Profanities” – are available free online via @gutenberg_org
4/4
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/569
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Victorian #19thcentury #modernism #TSEliot