Log24

Thesis —

A 1911 essay by T. E. Hulme,
"Romanticism and Classicism" —

"There is a general tendency to think that verse means
little else than the expression of unsatisfied emotion.
People say: 'But how can you have verse without sentiment?'
You see what it is: the prospect alarms them. A classical revival
to them would mean the prospect of an arid desert and the death
of poetry as they understand it, and could only come to fill the gap
caused by that death. Exactly why this dry classical spirit should
have a positive and legitimate necessity to express itself in poetry
is utterly inconceivable to them."

Antithesis —

A 1961 reaction against Hulme,
"Against Dryness" —

"Against the consolations of form, the clean crystalline
work, the simplified fantasy-myth, we must pit the
destructive power of the now so unfashionable naturalistic
idea of character.

Real people are destructive of myth, contingency is
destructive of fantasy and opens the way for imagination."

— Iris Murdoch, January 1961

Synthesis —

"Simone Weil said that morality
was a matter of attention not of will.
We need a new vocabulary of attention."

— Iris Murdoch, "Against Dryness"

Last Saturday's post Against Dryness quoted "Gone Girl,"
a recent film about an untypical couple. 

Other works of interest:

The Flame Alphabet  (Ben Marcus, 2012) and
The Folded Clock  (Heidi Julavits, 2015).

Marcus and Julavits are husband and wife. As in
"Gone Girl," both are very bright, and the wife
writes a diary. (No other resemblance between
the couples is apparent.)

Update of 6:40 PM ET March 31:

A 1983 review by the parents of Ben Marcus —

Update of 7:09 PM March 31:

"In the garden of Adding, 
 Live Even and Odd…."

– The Midrash Jazz Quartet
    in the novel City of God
    by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

From a search in this journal
for "Against Dryness":

See also the previous three posts.

* See the previous post's link Against Dryness.

(Continued.)

“I need a photo opportunity, 
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon 
in a cartoon graveyard.”

— Paul Simon

Photo opportunity
for the late John Bayley and Iris Murdoch —

From a cartoon graveyard, in memory of
a British artist who reportedly died yesterday: 

Against Dryness —

Cartoon by Martin Honeysett

Friday evening’s post Musement dealt with Iris Murdoch’s
phrase “the clean crystalline work.”

For dirty bloody work see the life of Don Reitz, who
reportedly died at 84 on March 19.

"A devoted father, Smith passes on his philosophy of life to his children through chess, among other things.

'My father taught me how to play chess at seven and introduced beautiful concepts that I try to pass on to my kids. The elements and concepts of life are so perfectly illustrated on a chess board. The ability to accurately assess your position is the key to chess, which I also think is the key to life.'

He pauses, searching for an example. 'Everything you do in your life is a move. You wake up in the morning, you strap on a gun, and you walk out on the street– that's a move. You've made a move and the universe is going to respond with its move.

'Whatever move you're going to make in your life to be successful, you have to accurately access the next couple of moves– like what's going to happen if you do this? Because once you've made your move, you can't take it back. The universe is going to respond.'

Smith has just finished reading The Alchemist, by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho: 'It says the entire world is contained in one grain of sand, and you can learn everything you need to learn about the entire universe from that one grain of sand. That is the kind of concept I'm teaching my kids.'"