tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post1164071450501722322..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: rising like flowers blossoming out - I admit that Flaubert is a realist - the true reality is in the writer's languageAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-55680516444839489502015-10-01T23:25:55.094-05:002015-10-01T23:25:55.094-05:00Look, Wuthering Expectations is becoming a philoso...Look, Wuthering Expectations is becoming a philosophy blog. Soon we will be shoving fat men in front of trains in the service of knowledge.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-65880285269125382842015-10-01T17:13:28.083-05:002015-10-01T17:13:28.083-05:00We must find an ideal apple-eater before we can an...We must find an ideal apple-eater before we can answer the question. But I am inclined to think that the ideal apple tastes like a Washington state Pink Lady.<br /><br />Wouldn't the Platonic fly find all things delicious?scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-58235032997996091062015-10-01T16:03:47.063-05:002015-10-01T16:03:47.063-05:00To paraphrase idealist Hume, is the flavor of the ...To paraphrase idealist Hume, is the flavor of the apple in the apple or in the one who tastes the apple? Before answering, please consider how the flavor of cow-pies must taste delicious to flies.Cleanthesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15363416290397892659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-2467570892881342662015-10-01T15:09:44.595-05:002015-10-01T15:09:44.595-05:00Note from Plato: Have you wondered how the ideal f...Note from Plato: Have you wondered how the ideal form "apple" tastes? Hmmm.R.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13220814349193561823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-63312517922773676132015-10-01T15:02:08.372-05:002015-10-01T15:02:08.372-05:00"I’ve certainly never looked at any real appl..."I’ve certainly never looked at any real apple in the same way as I have looked at Cézanne’s representations."<br />But have you ever tasted Cézanne’s representations?Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-14519129549292680822015-10-01T13:00:00.655-05:002015-10-01T13:00:00.655-05:00A line worth saving.A line worth saving.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-36929224397641040332015-10-01T12:08:35.900-05:002015-10-01T12:08:35.900-05:00"Zastrozzi" is short and entertaining. O..."Zastrozzi" is short and entertaining. One sentence tickled me so much I wrote it down: "Her symmetrical form, as borne away by the four officials, looked interestingly lovely." Bravo, little Percy! Doug Skinnerhttp://www.dougskinner.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-29132524793396471692015-10-01T11:14:36.102-05:002015-10-01T11:14:36.102-05:00Zastrozzi! I am impressed. Reading about it was ...<i>Zastrozzi</i>! I am impressed. Reading <i>about</i> it was enough for me, I guess.<br /><br />I am not going to pick a Best French Novel. I have read too many qualified candidates that are, as you say, too different. Just comparing contemporaries - say Hugo vs. Flaubert - puts me in different aesthetic and ethical worlds.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-87689323781972481462015-10-01T11:05:02.690-05:002015-10-01T11:05:02.690-05:00I can't pick a best novel, or even a best Fren...I can't pick a best novel, or even a best French novel, because I have trouble comparing dissimilar things. Voltaire, Potocki, Roussel, Beckett, Hugo, Jarry, Perec -- they all wrote wonderful French novels too, but they were all doing very different things. Is what they were doing better or worse that what Flaubert was doing? I have no idea.<br /><br />However, I can say that the last novel I read -- "Zastrozzi," written by Shelley when he was a troublesome teen -- was pretty bad. It was endearing, though. Doug Skinnerhttp://www.dougskinner.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-10894770023123014582015-10-01T08:57:36.256-05:002015-10-01T08:57:36.256-05:00Yes, Flaubert was a kind of Neoplatonist. The art...Yes, Flaubert was a kind of Neoplatonist. The artist glimpses the world outside of the cave and creates the shadows for those of us who for some reason cannot look away from the cave wall.<br /><br /><i>Madame Bovary</i> is a good choice for best French novel. I prefer it to <i>Sentimental Education</i>, perhaps because I feel I understand it better. I won't argue with anyone who prefers "A Simple Heart" to both.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-13051370325286180742015-10-01T08:48:14.969-05:002015-10-01T08:48:14.969-05:00FYI, as I have noted this morning at Beyond Eastro...FYI, as I have noted this morning at Beyond Eastrod, today marks the publication anniversary of the first installment of _Madame Bovary_, a novel that I am bold enough to nominate as the "best" French novel; my preference for _MB_, however, might be influenced by limited reading of French literature. And then, of course, there is the folly of selecting anything as being the " best."<br /><br />Now, as for representation v. presentation, that is quite the "can of worms." Those who write about the aesthetics of literature have spilled a lot of ink with opinions about the distinctions. As a half-baked Neoplatonist myself (well, sort of), I think all art is representational, with higher forms controlling everything, but realist writers seek to "hide" that representation (subjective copying of forms) within the disguise of presentation (ostensibly objective offerings). Does any of that drivel make any sense?R.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13220814349193561823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-33732413820931170812015-10-01T08:21:56.349-05:002015-10-01T08:21:56.349-05:00Well said. For most readers - and writers - I thi...Well said. For most readers - and writers - I think you are right. Representation heightens reality. And really, that is much of what I get out of Flaubert, too. I am not a mystic.<br /><br />I was tempted to mention Cézanne at several points here - so glad you mentioned him. He is the perfect example in visual arts, with later artists seeing him moving towards abstraction even though <i>he</i> did not see anything like abstraction. <i>He</i> was painting what he <i>saw</i>.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-89418410260130779802015-10-01T04:37:50.554-05:002015-10-01T04:37:50.554-05:00In other words, Flaubert is to dinner parties what...In other words, Flaubert is to dinner parties what, say, Cézanne is to apples, right? The apples aren’t interesting: what’s interesting is the way Cézanne depicts them. And because the representation is more real than reality, Cézanne’s apples are more beautiful and more meaningful than any real apple can be. I’ve certainly never looked at any real apple in the same way as I have looked at Cézanne’s representations.<br /><br />But I wonder if there’s another way of approaching this. The style, i.e. the manner of representation, does not necessarily give the representation a greater beauty or significance than the reality, but, rather, invests the reality itself with a significance that it would not otherwise have had.<br /><br />Once upon a time, literature used to concern itself with lofty and elevated matters – gods and goddesses, then kings and queens and princesses and bishops, declaiming in high-flown rhetoric on the profundities of life and of death, and so on. By Flaubert’s time, literature had become more democratic: the subjects weren’t kings and queens and princes and princesses: they were ordinary people in ordinary walks of life, doing ordinary things – like going to boring dinner parties. The subject of the artist is no longer the transcendent, but the mundane. So now, the artist, so as not to bore either the reader or himself, has to find significance in the mundane; the artist has to *transform* the mundane. If the modern writer cannot, as Homer or Virgil did, depict the transcendent directly, then that mundane reality must be invested with some sort of transcendence. <br /><br />Joyce did this. So, in his hands, an ordinary day in the lives of ordinary people going about their ordinary business becomes a mirror of the Odyssey. One may say that this deflates the heroic, but looked at another way, it elevates the everyday.<br /><br />But Flaubert’s artistic and moral aims are different: he is not interested in elevation. The subject is not the finding of the transcendent within the everyday, but the failure to do so. But whether one chooses to depict the transcendent within the mundane, or to depict the failure to achieve transcendence, either way, the transcendent itself must be evoked. So, by highlighting throughout the discrepancy between, on the one hand, the transcendent beauty of his representation of reality, and, on the other, the wretched dullness of what is being represented, the whole texture of Flaubert's novel seems stamped with a profound sadness and disillusion.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com