Comments for Modernity Seminar

Comment on Do Animals Have Lives? by sarahlepp

sarahlepp — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:02:51 +0000

The problem of individual morality calls back to discussions we had at the beginning of the semester when discussing “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. In “The Lives of Animals”, Coetzee effectively uses Elizabeth as a device to uproot and question society’s morals surrounding eating meat, but Coetzee only provides questions through an internally conflicted character who is trying to establish her own set of morals. He displays Elizabeth as someone who is in the process of constructing her own morals through fighting against societal norms, and while constructing her own morals is trying to get everyone around her to listen or even follow her. Our seminar, as well as the writer of “Do Animals Have Lives?”, brought up the problem of a society of individuals who all create their own set of morals. Would this type of society really be a problem? Would it be chaotic or are we, as individuals, not capable of overcoming the established moral codes within society?
Nietzsche is much more cut and dry with respect to morality; in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” he emphasizes the need for people to overcome human virtues, overcome the mob mentality, and overcome morality in order to be able to become as well as strive for the mentality of the overman. The topic of a society of overmen was in the Nietzsche seminar, whether or not a society of overmen could exist. If the individuals within the society could respect or even co-exist with one another’s personal set of morals. In seminar I don’t think we came up with any concrete ideas to whether or not a society of overcome could exist, but having this concept brought up in “The Lives of Animals” seminar made me reconsider this topic.
It seems that Coetzee has constructed an example of Nietzsche’s overman who is trying to overcome herself and overcome societies and morals. She is overcoming her own thoughts and ideas, forming new opinions and morals surrounding animals. And while she is doing this she is standing on her personal soap-box telling the world about her new and still forming morals. Yet throughout Zarathustra’s struggles, he was able to find individuals apart from society and actually find and philosophize with overmen. Elizabeth seems stuck, trapped with a society bearing down on her, unable to fully realize or form her own moral base.

Sarah Lepp

Comment on Existentialism in Literary Form by sarahlepp

sarahlepp — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:01:22 +0000

Brent was making the comparison to Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s philosophical stances to an individual’s essence and existence, I think it needs to be emphasized that the true essence which Sartre’s character’s see is still only a reflection – a reflection they are seeing and interpreting once they are dead. This is a reflection of their own perceived memories, a reflection of the people still alive out in the world becoming, as well as a non-reflection of those who are dead with you. In the case of Sartre’s three characters, they are trapped together in hell and two of them are constantly trying to reflect or interpret reflections of themselves based on one another. Only one of the characters, Inez, accepts her reflection. But here is where concept of becoming which Michael brought up is very important. These images or reflections which these dead characters are seeing of themselves are reflections of what they were when they were becoming. More importantly, these reflections are based on other people who still are becoming. Michael might be right that you can only make concrete statements about someone once they have stopped becoming; but the person making the statements is still becoming.
As that person changes, gains more experience and continues to become, their concrete statements on the person who has ceased to become could easily change. The person who is alive may see different aspects or reflections of the dead person’s life; gain a different understanding of that reflection. I don’t mean to say that Garcin should hold out hope that his image will change and people will stop viewing him as a coward, but, that is something that is something for those who are still becoming to deal with. Garcin is no longer part of this cycle of becoming so his concern over it is completely irrelevant. He is no longer an existing and free individual, but the imprint of his image is still a free entity, free to be reflected and re-reflected and interpreted by those who are still becoming.

Sarah Lepp

Comment on Beautiful Suffering by michaelpavan

michaelpavan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:27:59 +0000

Brent’s post reminds me a lot of Goethe’s Faust.

Faust is a scholar who buries himself in books to find the pinnacle of knowledge, truth, the meaning to life. His pursuits have not satisfied him.

Faust makes a pact with the devil and sells the devil his soul, if the devil can show him absolute happiness, bliss and ecstasy then Faust in that moment will give up his life. Faust and the devil then leave on a journey to satisfy Faust, in which they experience excitement and adventure.

Haller is influenced by Goethe, and considers him one of the immortals. Hermine plays a similar role to the devil, and Faust is Haller. Hermine teaches Haller how to live a life of physical enjoyment. At the peak of this enjoyment which involves drug induced ecstasy Hermine dies. Brent thinks Haller can now die also and become one of the immortals. This belief would coincide with Faust.

Moreover, love may be considered the deepest pleasure and deepest suffering. So once Haller had experienced that he could die. Another thought is to think that Haller has experienced love of life, and once he has tasted this type of love he can die. And isn’t that what Goethe’s Faust wanted? He wanted to experience the best thing life had to offer, and in that moment he would embrace death. Hermine is like the devil that will show Faust this experience, except that Hermine is possibly an imaginary character

Comment on Existentialism in Literary Form by michaelpavan

michaelpavan — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:48:02 +0000

This post got me thinking about Existential philosophy and Sartre.

Some things I’d like to bring up from the post are that it is only after we are dead are our characters set in stone.

Sartre is famous for the philosophical notion that existence precedes essence. Human beings are not born with an inherent essence. We are born ‘tabula rasa’. This philosophical notion clashes with any theory that says anything about ‘human nature’. Existential philosophy discredits the view of Evolutionary Biologists. Since all men start from blank slates no one is inherently better or worse off than any one else, in other words the old American motto that ‘All men are created equal’ holds true for Sartre. You cannot justify your petty life as somehow being outside of your control. You are a being of absolute responsibility and freedom. Your creativity for your being is in your hands. You cannot blame anyone but yourself for what you did in life, and who you became. Human beings are not selfish as the geneticists would have us believe, nor are they unselfish as religion would want us to believe. You are defined as selfish or unselfish by your actions in your life, and you are free to act in which ever way you choose. There are examples of selfish beings, tyrants who suppress whole nations for greed and wealth, and unselfish beings like Mahatma Gandhi. They are not born selfish or unselfish, they became that way through their actions, which they were responsible for.

Now another Existential notion is that we are beings of becoming. You cannot say ‘that person is selfish’ when they are still alive, you could claim ‘ that person just acted in a selfish manner by eating everyone’s food’, but that doesn’t make them selfish, it just makes that particular action a selfish one, the next moment they could donate half their savings in their bank account to starving children in Africa.

However, when a person dies, you can make concrete statements about who he or she was. That person has stopped ‘becoming’, change has stopped for that person. Thus, as Brent points out, Garcin has a difficult time accepting this because when all is said and done he is a coward.

Comment on Eliot and Williams: doom and hope by brentsteinburg

brentsteinburg — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:40:26 +0000

I agree with many of the distinctions that Madeline has identified, however that which appears most prominent to me is the idea that William’s poem focuses on a world that he has created in his mind, in order to escape reality. It is not that he is fantasizing about a world that is completely separate from ours, but rather that he is presenting a description of the world, which he has found by looking upon it with an imaginative eye. What this means is not entirely clear, but it seems to indicate that through his poetry Williams is able to make the often frustrating and unbearable, experiences of his everyday life into something remarkable, simply by processing them in a different light. It is this transformation of his everyday experiences into something remarkable that underlies Williams’ overall project. Having found the works of those rooted in the earlier tradition of poetry to be full of symbols, which were overused and void of meaning, Williams became interested in making poetry directly out of his own personal experiences. We find this appeal to actual experience in a line of Spring and All, which states, “In passing in my mind / on nothing in the world / but the right of way / I enjoy the road by / virtue of the law – / I saw / an elderly man who / smiled and looked away.” (Spring and All, p.119) It becomes obvious from these lines that Williams was not just trying, as most poets do, to write something beautiful. On the contrary, it seems that the beauty and emotion that each line demonstrates is an inevitable result of Williams’ appeal to his imagination when observing and recounting his experiences.
Where Eliot is attempting to portray the destruction of humanity, Williams is not even concerned with reality, but rather presents an interpretation of reality that is located in the imagination. Although Williams was as discontent with his society as Eliot, he did not criticize this society, but rather found an escape in his mind, which gave him the power to transform his reality into something beautiful. In his introduction to Spring and All Webster Schott states, “Williams knew one reality. He created another reality to make the first manageable.” (Spring and All, p.xv) A further distinction between Williams and Eliot is the fact that the later was a typical poet, writing in order to be read and appreciated, whereas for Williams writing was a necessity. Williams states, “I couldn’t rest until I had freed my mind from the obsessions which had been tormenting me all day…Having scribbled I could rest.”(Spring and All, p.xi) It is shown in this statement that Williams had a natural tendency to look upon the world with an imaginative eye, and that his poetry was simply a way to relieve his mind of the various images that he would create out of his daily experience. His poetry was not written in order to receive admiration from an audience, but rather as a sort of refuge. However, as Williams was using his imagination and portraying a beautiful perspective of the everyday world, many people reading in the United States expressed great appreciation for his works.
Madeline recognized a contrast between Williams’ optimism and Eliot’s pessimism regarding the future. There is certainly, as she points out, an influence on these contrasting views coming from the places that each is writing about, but what I find to be even more important in this distinction, is an idea mentioned previously. This is the fact that Eliot is describing his daily life, where as Williams’ poetry expresses a reality that is distinguishable from his actual life as a physician. He states, “Most of my life has been lived in hell–a hell of repression lit by flashes of inspiration, when a poem such as this or that would appear.”(Spring and All, p.xi) Williams had always dedicated himself to his profession, a profession that was in many ways hell, and what allowed him to look on life positively was the particular instances where his imagination gave him the ability to move beyond this reality, and to see the world as something truly remarkable. It is these instances that we find in Williams’ works, which explains why he is thought to be so much more optimistic about the future than Eliot. His optimism was not so much about the true reality that everybody found each day, but the opportunities provided by the imagination to transcend the horrors of that reality and to find something beautiful in those everyday experiences, which at that time were for the most part passed off as insignificant. Thus, it seems that those believing that Williams was much more optimistic about the future seems to be incorrect. On the contrary, he is just as aware of the destructive fate of modern society, yet he was lucky enough to find an escape through the imagination. Most of us will not be so fortunate to have the creative capacities to achieve this type of escape and therefore only experience the beauty in everyday experiences that Williams has in the brief glimpses that he offers in his poems.

Brent Steinburg

Comment on Ere I Start – A Quick Exorcise by aaron alexander

aaron alexander — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:48:23 +0000

I’m torn on this issue.

On one hand, I sympathize with Roy’s frustration with Williams. I, too, felt alienated by his work, a bitter aftertaste i’m sure was deliberate (it usually is with those pesky modernists). Then again, i also appreciate what Williams, as with other modernist poets, were trying to achieve–a new kind of poetry free from the neoclassicism of the eighteeth- and nineteeth-century. My biggest problem with some modernist writers, however, is their insistence upon breaking free of traditional forms of communicating thoughts and ideas. I don’t see this as an attempt to overturn classical ideals, so much as to reject ANY sense of order and reason in how humans think and interact with one another. I like innovation as much as the next guy, but if it comes at the price of comprehesion, then it strikes me as a pointless endeavor. The defender of modernism can claim that there is no underlying meaning to uncover in a work, but that seems contradictory to the very purpose of art. Just as all art is created by human hands, i find it difficult to look at any piece in such a cold and distant manner.

As a musician, i know that when i write a song, there may be many ideas and feelings running through me. So fair enough, trying to pidgeon-hole meaning or capital-I intention becomes difficult. But i do know that i feel something when writing a song, and i try my best to communicate that feeling through my music.

So yeah, maybe i just don’t like being challenged. Or maybe i quietly sympathize with the classicists. All i know is that modernists inspire and frustrate me like no other.

Comment on Fabulous photos of Baudelaire by botschaftneukoelln

botschaftneukoelln — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:39:47 +0000

http://botschaftneukoelln.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/genie-irrsinn-und-ruhm/

Comment on Pixies Andalou by aaron alexander

aaron alexander — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:18:58 +0000

Hey no problem, any way i can bring the Pixies into course discussion im glad to help. Great song/band.

Also, here is another GREAT band who i think some of you might like. They are great fun musically, and even funnier lyrically. Plus they are connected to the course in 2 key ways:

1. They are called Art Brut, and the song posted below is called Modern Art. Its HILARIOUS.

2. Their forthcoming new album is produced by none other than Frank Black of the Pixies!

Art Brut – Modern Art
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/art-brut-modern-art/1895957729

Lyrics:

Modern art
Makes me
Want to rock out
(x4)

So I’m in the Tate
And I’m looking at Hockney
There’s something about that blue
It touches me deep inside
I want to loosen my tie
I want to step outside
SWEET JESUS! I’m sweating
I’m palpitating
My heart begins to beat
Faster and faster
And faster!

Modern art
Makes me
Want to rock out
(x4)

So I’m in the Pompidou, that’s in Paris
And the French are far more laidback about their art galleries
There’s little children running around
So I see this my window of opportunity
I see a piece by Matisse
I put my head down
Three steps back,
And I…

RUN AT IT!

Modern art
Makes me
Want to rock out
(x4)

Comment on Constructed Imagination by drsteer

drsteer — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:18:30 +0000

Thanks for the link Sarah — what a fantastic form of art!

Comment on Ere I Start – A Quick Exorcise by brentsteinburg

brentsteinburg — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:50:37 +0000

I agree that it is difficult to understand a particular message in Williams’ poetry, however I do not recognize this as a negative attribute. It seems rather, and conveniently related to my latest post, that what I can take from his poetry is only what it means to my particular existence. This may be alienating, as it removes the common symbols that allow all readers to see the world through the eyes of the poet, but I believe this is exactly what society needs. Similar to Roy, I am amongst the lazy readers of poetry and do not wish to spend hours trying to understand particular references. As a result, it often seems that what I take from the poem is different from what the writer intended to convey. This may be looked down upon by many poets, yet for Williams this appears to be the best way to approach his poetry. Williams does not provide my imaginations with particular inspiration, but rather expresses his own experiences as they inspire him, and hopes that we may find something of value in these expressions. Certainly, there will be many people that read Williams poetry and find very little in it, yet others such as myself will find a great deal. This all depends on what one is looking for and how Williams’ ideas apply to our own existence. It seems that Williams wants his poetry to teach us something about our imagination, not about the world as it appears to him.
By leaving the meaning of the poem ambiguous, William’s provides everyone with the opportunity to make the poem their own. This gives the work an indefinite number of meanings and thus requires the use of the imagination to fully understand it. I believe Williams fully understood what he was writing about, yet he also realized that portraying these ideas as he found them would not allow his readers to develop themselves. Since he wished to move away from the ancient forms, which use common symbolism and require little creativity from the reader, he decided to leave the meaning of his poetry unfixed. This is not to say that anyone could put a few words together and inspire my imagination. On the contrary, it seems that Williams’ poetry is written in a way that is particularly effective at stirring the imagination. It is for this reason that I found Williams’ poetic form to be far more rewarding than that of the ancients.