Clean shirt long evening

 Beth Nelson

  I marveled with Gérard,

  that people must sound

  so different, who know

  the same thing.

  

       

Plato

The Symposium

4th Century BC

Christopher Gill, translation

Penguin Classics

Penguin Books, 1999©

A question about art

"Can you remember the moment you 

decided art was your love and noth-

ing would change that?"

Question lately posed at a blog

I read, then withdrawn. 

I did not answer that question, because I never have felt about art, that way; but I can remember heroes, and who can't. They came from art and they came very early, and as art does, they came numerously. Art taught me discernment before discernment taught me art, and these things I learned to keep to myself, and bring out largely in dreams. It was in consciousness that I found, art would not be my love but would be my friend. This (if you like) decision taught me the stature in that word, which is the largest.

ii   by land by air by sea

Anxiety, taste, discretion, and the fugitive caesura in blogging

More or less, everything

that can be done to dis-

sipate the mass and gloss

of the invasive cistern

seems to have been ex-

ecuted with poise. I'm

not so sure that the rem-

edy hasn't more than un-

derscored the anxiety to

achieve that end. I won-

der how impractical it

would have been to en-

fold the chilly intruder

in rustic materials, and

restore the fertile mig-

ration of shadows to an

alcove, respected.

..

For the beauty of the al-

cove is not the work of

some clever device ..

though we know perfectly

well it is mere shadow,

we are overcome with the

feeling that in this

small corner of the at-

mosphere there reigns

complete and utter si-

lence, that here in the

darkness immutable tran-

quillity holds sway.

I wish a text, even a

scrolling one such as a

blog, could exploit the

gainful amenities of jap-

onesque architecture, as

nourishing hiatuses. Beth

Nelson has gone the fur-

thest, in my observation,

in exploiting picture ed-

iting and layout to this

positive advantage, and

this spiritual refuge of

composition is profound

in photographers cited

in Context. 

The communication of the

peace of adding nothing

is past remarking in music;

anyone who revisited Va,

pensiero here the other

day, will have seen that.

In an epistolary blog, the

challenge is considerable

to be able to say, almost

if not completely unliter-

ally, draw peace from this

space. Adjustments acquire

an aura of mood swings, in-

congruous pleadings; a sus-

picious advertisement.

I agree with Tanizaki and

with Terestchenko, who has

written of this as well as

exhibiting it in his work,

that the well-framed mys-

tery is no mere void. It

is an irony of the argu-

mentative mode, that this

can be achieved one of two

ways - discoursing to the

adoptive, or adapting the

essay to the sonata form,

so that in place of the

caesura's expressive si-

lence there can have been 

a beginning, middle, and 

end of some formal resolu- 

tion. But that remains, 

audible, space-occupying: 

a restaurant.  

That compromise, the promise

of the essay form, is still the

most rational where the writer

and the reader may be crossing

paths, but not necessarily, pur-

poses. A visitor is likelier in-

terested in the stimulation of

light; his host may be trying

to turn away from the fray where

it emerges. This is why I do

respect argument, not to turn

away from light or implore its

remission, but to savour its 

lenity in the end.

Tanizaki Junichiro

In praise of shadows

Thomas J. Harper and

Edward G. Seidensticker

  translation

Leete's Island Books, 1977©

Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

jar and kate

I feel very confident now
of saying, it isn't always
possible to know when one
is ready to see a great
painting. 


Having to be in Washington
yesterday for other reasons,
I set aside a couple of 
hours of the afternoon to go
and look at Watteau; but the
NGA's French paintings are in
storage, pending repair of
their gallery's skylight, due
to be completed this month.


I'm not someone who can bear
to ignore a fine painting, 
and passing by the Ginevra
de' Benci is not my idea of
coming to grips with any part
of it. Moreover, I don't en-
joy assimilating more than
two masterpieces in a single
afternoon; and now that I do
not have to turn in an assign-
ment, it pleases me to look
at art as the work that it is.


I haven't any idea why the
painting I saw yesterday is not
taught along with the Eroica
symphony, apart from manifest-
ing that reign of specialisa-
tion that I so detest. This
work by Jackson Pollock is al-
so not going to be presented
here, because it cannot and it
does not make sense in this
medium - whereas, it is true,
one can read Beethoven.

A great painting will shock
for being the least radical
thing there could be; and,
as I say, it isn't always
possible to know when this
will be obvious. It will
sometimes be dozens of the
very things it is said not
to be; and in the case of
the Jackson Pollock painting
cited above, it is necessary
to tick some of them off at
once - it has structure, it
has narrative, it has coher-
ency, it has meaning, it has
eloquence, it has complete-
ness. It is, moreover, no
more than a coincidental ex-
position of its techniques.
So what was all the noise
about, we allow ourselves
to ask.


Mrs Nelson has given us a
gate to a residence, and I
suggest we look at it, past
the telltale elements of its
setting. After it has been
assimilated as a witness to
many passages, many seasons,
many handlings, many dis-
missals, what is it doing,
apart from staring us in
the face? I know very well,
what it is doing, but I
might not have done until
yesterday. It is staying.







  

Dialogue at South Luangwa

"Ask the same for me,"

for friends should have

all things in common."

No remark stands alongside this dialogue of Phaedrus and Socrates, unless it's the one between Diotima and Socrates in The Symposium, a conversation between the queries of the broad African plain and the éclat of its great falls. Diotima patiently explains: 

"Why don't we say everyone is a lover, if everyone always loves the same things; why do we call some people lovers and not others? It's nothing to wonder about. What we're doing is picking out one kind of love and applying it to the name, love, that belongs to the whole class, while we use different names for other kinds of love .. You know that composition forms a general class. When anything comes into being which did not exist before, the cause of this is always composition. So the products of all the crafts are compositions, and the craftsmen who make them are all composers? .. But you know, they aren't called composers, but have different names .." 

Here, they are differentiated by names - Beth Nelson, for the gift of the Phaedrus, typeset by a master printer from San Francisco and framed in her house by the ocean - and Ivan Terestchenko, for the gift of photographs congruent with the most important conversations in the life of this species. Is this, trying too hard, or is it composition; and what does Diotima say this is? That 'the good' is a verb, not an object; hence, when the good of seeing gives something being, which did not exist before, "the cause of this is always composition." To those who adore their objects, this must always seem like trying too hard.

Plato
427-347 B.C.
Phaedrus


The Symposium
Christopher Gill, translation
Penguin, 1999©


Camp stools, South Luangwa
Friends, Victoria Falls
July, 2011