ClumsyMonkey.net

myownsatellite wrote:Go read T. S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent."

I tried to read/understand that the best I could but didn't have much luck.
Is he trying to say that if your a poet or writer you must have at one point read the classics such as Homer? Therefore (sometime subliminal, sometimes on purpose) you as a new poet/writer will copy elements of Homer in some way shape or form so that in the end nothing is really original.

Incorporating 'some' elements of a classic into a new piece of work may be inevitable. I'm sure at some point George Lucas took parts of 2001: A Space Odessey, just as Kubrick may had taken ideas from someone else. But their still very different movies. Obviosuly Lucas put some creative throught process into his work.

But with all these cookie cutter comic flicks there is little originality. It's already been writen 30 years ago now just adpated for the big screen and aimed to the widest audience posible in order to rake in the most money possible.

He's pretty much arguing that writers must understand and recognize that the whole of history impacts their work, and that unless they can bring the past into dialogue with the present, their work will be incomplete. He values good works on their level of transcendence from personal to impersonal via the historical sense that must be ingrained in all of us. The present is constantly rewriting the past, and the past is constantly rewriting the present.

So you don't have to have read the classics in order to create a good work, but you need to recognize that the classics and everything else that has ever been written is going to show up in your work in some form or another.

Have you heard of rebirthing therapy? The return to the beginning, in order to transcend the present, is pretty much what he's arguing for. And instead of talking about emotions in art (which are personal), we need to look at a work of art and discuss it in the context of feelings (which are impersonal). The purging of personality and emotions is part of the idea of mastery and escape in order to transcend to a higher level of understanding. This also puts the writer in the position of the critic and makes authorial intent irrelevant.

It's like a spiral instead of a circle - by returning to the beginning and then having your work interact with it in dialogue, you end up with a higher understanding, and on a higher level. So you return to the beginning, but on a different level. Like a spiral.

I just wrote a 12-page paper on the essay and its relationship with the critical novel...by the time I was finished writing it (15 or so hours in) I wasn't even sure what the heck I was talking about, but I do know at least what I wrote up there.

Oh by the way - I'm proud of you for actually going to read that article!

myownsatellite wrote:Oh by the way - I'm proud of you for actually going to read that article!

Not the easiest read.
Send me something more on a High School English level next time.

What Happens in Vegas. It's a good date movie, lots of laughs and the feel good ending.

Kicker774 wrote:

myownsatellite wrote:Oh by the way - I'm proud of you for actually going to read that article!

Not the easiest read.
Send me something more on a High School English level next time.

They don't explain this stuff in high school English classes.

Ya I did like it. Very entertaining.

Someday Cass will learn to use the quote button when replying to people. Someday.

I found TS Eliot to be entertaining myself.
It was the feel good story of the year.

Well now I'm just never going to use it. Ever.

Well there's no way to really use the Eliot article...you can analyze it and put it into dialogue with other things but...

...Oh wait, you mean the quote button. I got confused

i liked iron man. it was good.
i want car and robot helpers now.
make me food

myownsatellite wrote:Well there's no way to really use the Eliot article...you can analyze it and put it into dialogue with other things but...

...Oh wait, you mean the quote button. I got confused

she meant the quote button

...As I said in my post I was being sarcastic

oops i read it as you ASKING if that's what she was replying to!

I haven't said anything in a while!

Lando wrote:oops i read it as you ASKING if that's what she was replying to!

That's what QUESTION marks are for, Lando! Sheesh!

ive never understood the concept of punctuation (exclamation mark)

jay and silent bob strike back and cloverfield
and nothing tonight

lastnight star wars: episode 1 and tonight episode 2

been on a huge kung-fu kick (lolz) lately

in the past couple days I've watched:

The Forbidden Kigndom
The Legend of Drunken Master
Who Am I?
Dragons Forever
Rumble in the Bronx
SPL: Sha Po Lang