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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (25334)	10/7/1998 10:18:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I had the same reaction. The idea that literature, because it uses words, is in second place, in the arts, in its ability to convey emotion is very startling indeed to me... As a sort of protest, in the nature of a cri de coeur, really, I feel compelled to register just a few names here. First, a very few poets. (One definition of poetry, I don't recall whose, is "emotion recollected in tranquility.") Gerard Manley Hopkins (a religious poet!) William Blake William Butler Yeats Elizabeth Barrett Browning Philip Larkin Sylvia Plath William Shakespeare --------- Now, a very few novelists who are masters at communicating emotion: Charles Dickens Marcel Proust George Gissing Fyodor Dostoyevski George Eliot Both Brontes Gustave Flaubert Samuel Richardson Chinua Achebe Franz Kafka Willa Cather ---------------------------------------- [BTW, the Catholic Church, in the 18th century, was so alarmed at the power of the novel to stir the emotions, that the printing or reading of novels was forbidden in Latin America for two hundred years.] [And the elevation of architecture above literature in its ability to convey or arouse emotion is truly ideosyncratic.]

To: Dayuhan who wrote (25334)	10/8/1998 9:30:00 AM
From: George S. Montgomery	Respond to of 108807

Damnit! I can't cut and past on AOL's IE, only on Netscape - and I'm on IE now... So, I will refer to the last sentence/paragraph of this post to which I respond. It should have "art" replaced by a blank, and should be reproduced countlessly. In the blank could go: "waves", "mist on the skin", "a baby's burbled bubble", and so on and so on and so on and so on... Geo ps: love it when you and E tango

To: Dayuhan who wrote (25334)	10/8/1998 9:35:00 AM
From: Rick Julian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Steven, I intentionally omitted literature and poetry because as evocative as they can be, even they reach a threshold where they become inadequate. I find the other forms I included are able to speak with an emotional and spiritual vocabulary that words can't. And I'm not saying words are inferior--they are different. For example, I don't think any prose or poetry could emotionally convey the concept of "blue" like the song "In a Sentimental Mood" does (even if one were to omit the lyric). No writing I've ever read has communicated the complex emotional matrix of mournfulness and spiritual optimism as well as Samuel Barber's "Adagio" does. No poem can say what an obelisk says, no prose what a Rothko does. Have I not read enough? I've read much, but I won't trot out my reading list, nor catalog my library to prove my point. I admit a bias. I make my living writing music. I believe my professional experience in a career of working with words and music has given me adequate fodder for thought. In my subjective opinion, non-written art functions on different levels than its written counterparts. If you know any artists personally, maybe you could ask them their opinions on this subject. Rick