Coming SOON: How Kierkegaard is a better model for surrealism than Hegel.
Also, further replies to our Icelandic correspondant.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Should Aesthetics Be Outlawed? The Lutheran Surrealist Position
Plato argued in book 3 that the poets should be outlawed unless they reinforced the ethics of Athens. Zhdanov argued that poets should be outlawed unless their work reinforced the worker’s state. Mao outlawed traditional aesthetics. That the societies that these dictators dreamed up were arguably better than a society in which many of the best thinkers in a society sit around writing rhymed couplets while others starve is obvious. We must kill our poets.
Think of the buggers! They write about flowers, at a time when many cannot eat. They write about love, when many are condemned to death! They write about death, at a time when many are barely alive. Poets are a waste of time. What is left is to decide how to kill them.
There are hundreds of ways to kill a poet. Launch them into outer space, drown them in a keg of honey, shoot poisoned BBs into their left ears, break their knees and force them to walk to work in the salt mines, guillotine them, or give them fancy grants, and an unlimited alcohol budget. The most important thing is to kill them. Kill them all!
Poets at first do not seem to be dangerous. They are generally not very muscular, nor are they very fast on their feet. Few of them rob banks, or commit heinous crimes. Nevertheless, they are singlehandedly destroying America! Their unkempt abodes provide a model for the young. Their affairs do likewise. The business of America is business, and anyone who provides a different model should be catapulted over the moon. Moreover, many poets are boring. The Language poets make no sense. Crush them under a bulldozer, and see if they can spot the referent!
Above all, we must turn to ethics. Ethics are universal, and aesthetics merely personal. Swat down the aesthetical among us, and reinforce the ethical. Anyone who breathes poetry must die. Kill the slick buggers immediately. Even to have a thought of a beautiful sunset or a gorgeous body, is criminal behavior that should be punished unto death. Kill the pornographers! Kill the poets! Same thing! They are all pornographers! Kill everybody who loves this world! We must kill them to save this world!
This is an official ad of the Lutheran Surrealist Party.
Plato argued in book 3 that the poets should be outlawed unless they reinforced the ethics of Athens. Zhdanov argued that poets should be outlawed unless their work reinforced the worker’s state. Mao outlawed traditional aesthetics. That the societies that these dictators dreamed up were arguably better than a society in which many of the best thinkers in a society sit around writing rhymed couplets while others starve is obvious. We must kill our poets.
Think of the buggers! They write about flowers, at a time when many cannot eat. They write about love, when many are condemned to death! They write about death, at a time when many are barely alive. Poets are a waste of time. What is left is to decide how to kill them.
There are hundreds of ways to kill a poet. Launch them into outer space, drown them in a keg of honey, shoot poisoned BBs into their left ears, break their knees and force them to walk to work in the salt mines, guillotine them, or give them fancy grants, and an unlimited alcohol budget. The most important thing is to kill them. Kill them all!
Poets at first do not seem to be dangerous. They are generally not very muscular, nor are they very fast on their feet. Few of them rob banks, or commit heinous crimes. Nevertheless, they are singlehandedly destroying America! Their unkempt abodes provide a model for the young. Their affairs do likewise. The business of America is business, and anyone who provides a different model should be catapulted over the moon. Moreover, many poets are boring. The Language poets make no sense. Crush them under a bulldozer, and see if they can spot the referent!
Above all, we must turn to ethics. Ethics are universal, and aesthetics merely personal. Swat down the aesthetical among us, and reinforce the ethical. Anyone who breathes poetry must die. Kill the slick buggers immediately. Even to have a thought of a beautiful sunset or a gorgeous body, is criminal behavior that should be punished unto death. Kill the pornographers! Kill the poets! Same thing! They are all pornographers! Kill everybody who loves this world! We must kill them to save this world!
This is an official ad of the Lutheran Surrealist Party.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Frederick Law Olmsted said that the art we make should make future generations grateful for our existence.
He made Central Park in NYC.
It had been a swamp.
Almost every aspect of the swamp was refurbished including the giant rocks throughout the park. They were brought in.
It would be fun if someone were to write a poem as good as Central Park. The best thing to do on a nice autumn day is to bring a book of poems and read them on one of the 9000 benches in Central Park.
There are 125 drinking fountains. Drink from one as you wend your way.
125 playing fields. Stop and watch a ball game.
As you step across the roads that cut through the park, look at the manhole covers. There are 600,000 of them in the five boroughs. Each one weighs 200 pounds and is made of cast-iron. It is inserted into a structure that weighs four hundred pounds. They cost about $50 each to make and are made in India.
Last year there were 2000 rapes in NYC. Of those, only two took place in Central Park. There were 600 murders city-wide. Only five took place in Central Park.
25 million people visit the park every year. Be one, and be grateful to F.L. Olmsted and his design partner Calvert Vaux (pronounced Vox, as he was a Brit). Vaux designed the castle (and probably most other architectural elements).
He made Central Park in NYC.
It had been a swamp.
Almost every aspect of the swamp was refurbished including the giant rocks throughout the park. They were brought in.
It would be fun if someone were to write a poem as good as Central Park. The best thing to do on a nice autumn day is to bring a book of poems and read them on one of the 9000 benches in Central Park.
There are 125 drinking fountains. Drink from one as you wend your way.
125 playing fields. Stop and watch a ball game.
As you step across the roads that cut through the park, look at the manhole covers. There are 600,000 of them in the five boroughs. Each one weighs 200 pounds and is made of cast-iron. It is inserted into a structure that weighs four hundred pounds. They cost about $50 each to make and are made in India.
Last year there were 2000 rapes in NYC. Of those, only two took place in Central Park. There were 600 murders city-wide. Only five took place in Central Park.
25 million people visit the park every year. Be one, and be grateful to F.L. Olmsted and his design partner Calvert Vaux (pronounced Vox, as he was a Brit). Vaux designed the castle (and probably most other architectural elements).
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS
Pumpkins are made of mathematical precision
As are daisies and propellors
When the moon's 30 days have been partitioned
A percentage of our lives is dissipated
Powerfully built the train leaves Leipzig on time
The local church is playing Bach's
Italian concerto in F
Everything can be counted everything measured
Pumpkins are made of mathematical precision
As are daisies and propellors
When the moon's 30 days have been partitioned
A percentage of our lives is dissipated
Powerfully built the train leaves Leipzig on time
The local church is playing Bach's
Italian concerto in F
Everything can be counted everything measured
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Friday, September 10, 2004
Lutheran Surrealism: Agape and Eros
Yes the names indicate two different kinds of love. Agape being the Biblical love of the other as a person and soul. Eros meaning a willful love. Lutheranism implies agape, and surrealism implies erotic love.
Can the two be combined? In Paul Tillich's Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (University of Chicago Press 1955) he argues that they can be combined. "Agape reaches down to the lowest, forgiving its estrangement and reunited it with the highest. But agape does not contradict the desire for the highest; and a part of this desire is cognitive eros" (72).
Tillich says that eros as a term may derive from Plato's Symposium, while the Biblical agape can be found in both the Old and the New Testament.
Can the two cultures be combined?
"Since the breakdown of the great synthesis between Christianity and the modern mind as attempted by Schleiermacher, Hegel, and 19th century liberalism, an attitude of weariness has grasped the minds of people who are unable to accept one or the other alternative. They are too disappointed to try another synthesis after so many have failed. But there is no choice for us. We must try again!" (57).
The great problem of the present period can perhaps be found in Tillich's paragraph. The so-called Culture Wars are in fact a giant schism between those who believe in Biblical Reality and those who believe in liberal humanism. The synthesis attempted by Hegel and the German Idealists beginning with Schleiermacher gave us much, but many have since decided that the two are like oil and water. They can mix, but only temporarily. Ultimately they will separate.
Tillich is one of the few moderns who continued to attempt to mix them. The surrealists utterly rejected Christianity (with a few exceptions such as Pierre Klossowski) and Christianity has utterly rejected the modernist spirit of surrealism (with a few exceptions such as Paul Tillich).
Lutheran Surrealism attempts to follow the Don Quixote of Klossowski and Tillich in bridging the two Cultures. We do not want a Christianity that is unable to see contemporary philosophy and art as fellow travellers in the search for ultimate meaning. We also do not want a contemporary art or philosophy that has abandoned the search for an ultimate meaning and run aground on the rocky shoals of nihilism and despair.
Lutheran Surrealism is like a Brooklyn Bridge between two great cultures. Faith and doubt are not separate but part of the same coin -- Koinonia -- community. If we want change, we will have to find a common coinage. Lutheran surrealism is busy printing the funny money of the future commonwealths.
Yes the names indicate two different kinds of love. Agape being the Biblical love of the other as a person and soul. Eros meaning a willful love. Lutheranism implies agape, and surrealism implies erotic love.
Can the two be combined? In Paul Tillich's Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (University of Chicago Press 1955) he argues that they can be combined. "Agape reaches down to the lowest, forgiving its estrangement and reunited it with the highest. But agape does not contradict the desire for the highest; and a part of this desire is cognitive eros" (72).
Tillich says that eros as a term may derive from Plato's Symposium, while the Biblical agape can be found in both the Old and the New Testament.
Can the two cultures be combined?
"Since the breakdown of the great synthesis between Christianity and the modern mind as attempted by Schleiermacher, Hegel, and 19th century liberalism, an attitude of weariness has grasped the minds of people who are unable to accept one or the other alternative. They are too disappointed to try another synthesis after so many have failed. But there is no choice for us. We must try again!" (57).
The great problem of the present period can perhaps be found in Tillich's paragraph. The so-called Culture Wars are in fact a giant schism between those who believe in Biblical Reality and those who believe in liberal humanism. The synthesis attempted by Hegel and the German Idealists beginning with Schleiermacher gave us much, but many have since decided that the two are like oil and water. They can mix, but only temporarily. Ultimately they will separate.
Tillich is one of the few moderns who continued to attempt to mix them. The surrealists utterly rejected Christianity (with a few exceptions such as Pierre Klossowski) and Christianity has utterly rejected the modernist spirit of surrealism (with a few exceptions such as Paul Tillich).
Lutheran Surrealism attempts to follow the Don Quixote of Klossowski and Tillich in bridging the two Cultures. We do not want a Christianity that is unable to see contemporary philosophy and art as fellow travellers in the search for ultimate meaning. We also do not want a contemporary art or philosophy that has abandoned the search for an ultimate meaning and run aground on the rocky shoals of nihilism and despair.
Lutheran Surrealism is like a Brooklyn Bridge between two great cultures. Faith and doubt are not separate but part of the same coin -- Koinonia -- community. If we want change, we will have to find a common coinage. Lutheran surrealism is busy printing the funny money of the future commonwealths.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
LYME'S DISEASE
A couple of years ago in an Introduction to Mythology Class I asked how many of the students had Lyme's Disease. About ten of twenty-five raised their hands. The problem for these students is that they had come to worship "nature" and were avid hikers and enjoyed wilderness adventuring. They had come to the class interested especially in learning more about Artemis/Diana -- goddess of witchcraft throughout the Middle Ages, continuing on through Shakespeare's plays. Falstaff mentions that he is a "minion of the moon" -- and a true citizen of Ephesia -- a cult city dedicated to the worship of Diana.
At a faculty meeting two weeks back I spoke with a doctor who is now adjuncting at my small college. He was a member of a very large hospital emergency surgery team when he started to feel woozy. Unable to continue to do his very demanding job he is now on disability. After years of being misdiagnosed as having MS or other maladies, it turns out that he had contracted Lyme's disease from one day hiking.
Lyme's has a peculiar etiology -- spending three years making its way into deer ticks that then have to burrow into a hiker's leg, and then remain there unnoticed for 48 hours. It is then nearly a year and a half before disease becomes a full-blown malady.
With such an enormous number of Lyme's Victims, it is odd that one hears so little about the disease. The doctor I spoke with told me that the percentage of victims may be as high as 1% of the American population. If caught early on, the disease can be held at bay. If it continues on its course it can lead to disability, and even in some cases to death. And yet, there appears to be very little funding for research.
The important novelist Amy Tan has the disease. Her book The Opposite of Fate, is one of the few literary depictions of the disease.
Whereas the AIDS virus and its victims has received enormous publicity (it is invariably lethal and so is a much more serious disease) and has had very good literary coverage and currently receives approximately 25% of National Institute of Health budget funds towards its cure, the Lyme's Disease problem remains almost entirely invisible. There is a medical book edited by Daniel Rahn entitled Lyme's Disease. One would think that the Sierra Club and other nature organizations would make Lyme's a priority. At present the only political organization that has made Lyme's Disease a priority is Lutheran Surrealism. Vote for us in November and we will try to insure that 1% of medical funding (matching the population of sufferers) is detourned toward this mounting epidemic.
A couple of years ago in an Introduction to Mythology Class I asked how many of the students had Lyme's Disease. About ten of twenty-five raised their hands. The problem for these students is that they had come to worship "nature" and were avid hikers and enjoyed wilderness adventuring. They had come to the class interested especially in learning more about Artemis/Diana -- goddess of witchcraft throughout the Middle Ages, continuing on through Shakespeare's plays. Falstaff mentions that he is a "minion of the moon" -- and a true citizen of Ephesia -- a cult city dedicated to the worship of Diana.
At a faculty meeting two weeks back I spoke with a doctor who is now adjuncting at my small college. He was a member of a very large hospital emergency surgery team when he started to feel woozy. Unable to continue to do his very demanding job he is now on disability. After years of being misdiagnosed as having MS or other maladies, it turns out that he had contracted Lyme's disease from one day hiking.
Lyme's has a peculiar etiology -- spending three years making its way into deer ticks that then have to burrow into a hiker's leg, and then remain there unnoticed for 48 hours. It is then nearly a year and a half before disease becomes a full-blown malady.
With such an enormous number of Lyme's Victims, it is odd that one hears so little about the disease. The doctor I spoke with told me that the percentage of victims may be as high as 1% of the American population. If caught early on, the disease can be held at bay. If it continues on its course it can lead to disability, and even in some cases to death. And yet, there appears to be very little funding for research.
The important novelist Amy Tan has the disease. Her book The Opposite of Fate, is one of the few literary depictions of the disease.
Whereas the AIDS virus and its victims has received enormous publicity (it is invariably lethal and so is a much more serious disease) and has had very good literary coverage and currently receives approximately 25% of National Institute of Health budget funds towards its cure, the Lyme's Disease problem remains almost entirely invisible. There is a medical book edited by Daniel Rahn entitled Lyme's Disease. One would think that the Sierra Club and other nature organizations would make Lyme's a priority. At present the only political organization that has made Lyme's Disease a priority is Lutheran Surrealism. Vote for us in November and we will try to insure that 1% of medical funding (matching the population of sufferers) is detourned toward this mounting epidemic.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Sunday, September 05, 2004
LUTHERAN AND SURREALIST PILGRIMAGES
Of course on the Lutheran side there is Wittenberg and Jerusalem.
On the surrealist side there is Paris.
Many of my favorite books have been adventures in which a group sets out in search of wisdom. Many stories have people setting out in search of treasure, with their secret maps. Bt how many stories have wisdom itself as the goal?
Gilgamesh.
Meetings with Remarkable Men, by Gurdjieff.
She, by H. Rider Haggard.
There are many stories from the 60s such as On the Road, and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which a rigorous trip is made. A current book that fits into the genre is Codrescu's Road Scholar.
I can't think of many books along these lines by women. Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain is about a boy from Brooklyn who comes to spend a year in the Catskills. In fact, he lived just outside of the town of Delhi.
Treasure, maps, knowledge.
Dorothy discovers in the Wizard of Oz that there is no place like home.
There are also books about escapes, but these are the equivalent of walking backwards. I'm curious to read more books about searches for wisdom. In a sense Homer's book is about the gaining of wisdom, but the immediate problem is getting honor and Helen back. Wisdom is a by-product.
Many academics go no further than to the library for wisdom.
In the 60s families piled the luggage on top of the station wagon and set out to explore state parks and lost remnants of the family tree. The goal in that case was beauty, perhaps?
Of course on the Lutheran side there is Wittenberg and Jerusalem.
On the surrealist side there is Paris.
Many of my favorite books have been adventures in which a group sets out in search of wisdom. Many stories have people setting out in search of treasure, with their secret maps. Bt how many stories have wisdom itself as the goal?
Gilgamesh.
Meetings with Remarkable Men, by Gurdjieff.
She, by H. Rider Haggard.
There are many stories from the 60s such as On the Road, and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which a rigorous trip is made. A current book that fits into the genre is Codrescu's Road Scholar.
I can't think of many books along these lines by women. Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain is about a boy from Brooklyn who comes to spend a year in the Catskills. In fact, he lived just outside of the town of Delhi.
Treasure, maps, knowledge.
Dorothy discovers in the Wizard of Oz that there is no place like home.
There are also books about escapes, but these are the equivalent of walking backwards. I'm curious to read more books about searches for wisdom. In a sense Homer's book is about the gaining of wisdom, but the immediate problem is getting honor and Helen back. Wisdom is a by-product.
Many academics go no further than to the library for wisdom.
In the 60s families piled the luggage on top of the station wagon and set out to explore state parks and lost remnants of the family tree. The goal in that case was beauty, perhaps?
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
LUTHERANISM VS. SURREALISM
According to Lutheranism there are three orders of society. These are gifts from God that stretch between this world and the next. The most important of these orders is marriage. It is the one order that is considered "superlapsarian." This means that it existed before the fall and continues to exist in our own day. Marriage is the beginning of society. It is by no means a perfect institution. There are fights, and the partners are often unhappy. And yet the possibility of a private language, of intimacy, exists in this institution as in no other. We recommend it. To us, it makes this world possible.
The second order is the economy. Again, the economy is never going to function perfectly. It isn't meant to function perfectly.
The third order is government. There can be no perfect government in this kingdom.
Any attempt to make this world into heaven in any of the three orders results in chaos. We must accept our limits, and a certain degree of suffering.
Let's now consider surrealism in the light of the three orders. Breton did believe in marriage. He married three times, and the last marriage was monogamous. The first two I believe were not. But he often argued that it was possible to have a monogamous and yet loving marriage. He tried to protect Gorky's marriage from the predatory artist Matta and when Matta ruined Gorky's marriage and this led to Gorky's suicide, Breton excommunicated Matta.
In terms of economics, the surrealists sold books and art. Insofar as I know Breton's understanding of economics was ruinous to many of the surrealists, except insofar as they were able to sell precious objects to the elite. Philippe Soupault was thrown out of the group for practicing journalism and writing novels. Only poetry was considered an acceptable mode of writing. Even sold as precious objects with exquisite drawings, it doesn't support a family. Soupault rightly objected, as he had a family to support, and continued to practice journalism throughout most of his life.
In terms of government, Breton had a similar confusion. At first he tried to make a provisional arrangement with Marxists. This fell apart when it turned out that the Soviets wanted to tell him what he could and couldn't say. Later on he turned to the anarchists. Since anarchists by definition do not believe in government there was no order. Surrealists in turn denounced liberal governments (such as that of the French who tried to subjugate Algeria and Vietnam) as well as the Maoists and communists (Breton denounced Stalin in the 30s and Mao in the 50s).
All government was considered criminal by Breton and his orthodoxy.
Lutheranism supports government, the traditional economy and marriage, and see these three things as making society possible. We believe in a police force and an army, as tools by which the government can legitimately enforce its will. While we are fallen, and therefore aren't perfect, and there will be corrupt governors and police, we believe that this is better than the alternative.
With J-F Lyotard (in his later writings) we believe that liberal democracy is the most viable form of government. This form of government is only a framework of action, however. What weso need is an ethos. We believe that the Christian ethos clarifies moral action. In art, which is a realm of pure freedom in which no responsibility needs to exist except toward aesthetics (the marvelous!) we feel that surrealism has opened this route like no other.
At present we are unable to fit these philosophies into a coherent and satisfying whole such that others can find in Lutheran surrealism a readymade mode of existence. We are like a baby Gargantua just now getting up on its knees and looking about. Everything seems new.
According to Lutheranism there are three orders of society. These are gifts from God that stretch between this world and the next. The most important of these orders is marriage. It is the one order that is considered "superlapsarian." This means that it existed before the fall and continues to exist in our own day. Marriage is the beginning of society. It is by no means a perfect institution. There are fights, and the partners are often unhappy. And yet the possibility of a private language, of intimacy, exists in this institution as in no other. We recommend it. To us, it makes this world possible.
The second order is the economy. Again, the economy is never going to function perfectly. It isn't meant to function perfectly.
The third order is government. There can be no perfect government in this kingdom.
Any attempt to make this world into heaven in any of the three orders results in chaos. We must accept our limits, and a certain degree of suffering.
Let's now consider surrealism in the light of the three orders. Breton did believe in marriage. He married three times, and the last marriage was monogamous. The first two I believe were not. But he often argued that it was possible to have a monogamous and yet loving marriage. He tried to protect Gorky's marriage from the predatory artist Matta and when Matta ruined Gorky's marriage and this led to Gorky's suicide, Breton excommunicated Matta.
In terms of economics, the surrealists sold books and art. Insofar as I know Breton's understanding of economics was ruinous to many of the surrealists, except insofar as they were able to sell precious objects to the elite. Philippe Soupault was thrown out of the group for practicing journalism and writing novels. Only poetry was considered an acceptable mode of writing. Even sold as precious objects with exquisite drawings, it doesn't support a family. Soupault rightly objected, as he had a family to support, and continued to practice journalism throughout most of his life.
In terms of government, Breton had a similar confusion. At first he tried to make a provisional arrangement with Marxists. This fell apart when it turned out that the Soviets wanted to tell him what he could and couldn't say. Later on he turned to the anarchists. Since anarchists by definition do not believe in government there was no order. Surrealists in turn denounced liberal governments (such as that of the French who tried to subjugate Algeria and Vietnam) as well as the Maoists and communists (Breton denounced Stalin in the 30s and Mao in the 50s).
All government was considered criminal by Breton and his orthodoxy.
Lutheranism supports government, the traditional economy and marriage, and see these three things as making society possible. We believe in a police force and an army, as tools by which the government can legitimately enforce its will. While we are fallen, and therefore aren't perfect, and there will be corrupt governors and police, we believe that this is better than the alternative.
With J-F Lyotard (in his later writings) we believe that liberal democracy is the most viable form of government. This form of government is only a framework of action, however. What weso need is an ethos. We believe that the Christian ethos clarifies moral action. In art, which is a realm of pure freedom in which no responsibility needs to exist except toward aesthetics (the marvelous!) we feel that surrealism has opened this route like no other.
At present we are unable to fit these philosophies into a coherent and satisfying whole such that others can find in Lutheran surrealism a readymade mode of existence. We are like a baby Gargantua just now getting up on its knees and looking about. Everything seems new.
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