Overrated

[packbat]

My mom told me this story once. She was in an English class, Lit class, something like that - high school or college - and the teacher was talking about that "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" poem. Dreck, he said. Or didn't, probably; I don't remember Mom's words, and she might not remember his. Hers? I think his. Anyway, he went along describing in detail all the ways this poem was terrible, and finally said, Here, just listen to it! And opened the book and read it out loud.

(I'm going to invoke artistic license here, depart from my mother's account, and quote Sonnets from the Portugese: XLIII from RPO:)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

And then he stopped.

Hey, that's actually pretty good, he said.

---

We may be tempted to laugh at the spectacle of the critic being overwhelmed by the work he tried to shred. But that is not the lesson here - he spoke his mind in the most laudable sense of the phrase, and that he had to - and did - reverse himself a moment later merely shows that he was honest.

Nor should we believe that we may not lambast any work of art. For example, Rescue from Gilligan's Island was a terrible, terrible movie (although not, fortunately, near-fatally so), and no amount of misplaced excoriation will change that.

Insead, we should say this: familiarity does not require contempt. The old "To be or not to be" soliloquy, High Noon with Gary Cooper, Vivaldi's Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269 ("Spring" from the Four Seasons), Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Melville's Moby Dick - these things are familiar because they are superb. Let never cynicism, misanthropy, the desire for originality, or the opinion of your companions stop you from recognizing that.

Comments

[explodingbat.livejournal.com]

To be honest it's not something i've given a lot of thought to. I might see a picture or sculpture and think it looks nice, or hear a tune and find it catchy, but it wouldn't occur to me to try and dissect the work to discover why. Most art reviews I read in the newspaper are pretty impenetrable, though I'm sure they're invaluable for more creative types of people.

I'd probably even disagree that beauty is something that needs to be striven for.. I'm not saying that doing so is worthless but it seems pretty clear that at least some aesthetic sense is hard-wired (http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Network_Redies_et_al_2007.pdf).

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Hey, I don't know that much about it either. I just wanted to defend criticism as a legitimate response to art.

[explodingbat.livejournal.com]

That's fair enough, but all too often criticism seems to be an art form in itself. You've probably never encountered Newsnight Review (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsnight_Review#Newsnight_Review) (in which case you're lucky) but I find it hard to watch people talk seriously about this stuff without wondering what gives them the right to do so (plus i disagree with their reviews quite a lot of the time).

Also, is Moby Dick worth slogging through? I've contemplated reading it but get the impression that it's about 10% story (by volume) and that most of the rest would probably go over my head.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think you need special permission to talk about art. As for disagreeing with their reviews, de gustibus non est disputandum, I always say.

Y'know what? I'm not even going to answer the question. What I will say instead is: read the first few chapters (http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/) and see if you like it. It's really pretty clever, and if the style works for you it'd probably be a good read. And if it doesn't, I won't make you do any (more) slogging - that's your choice entirely.