Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Lev Tolstoy, by Repin. 1887

What has it? What brings it? What gives mean­ing to our exis­tence in the here and now? The after­life? Paradoxes aside, the search for mean­ing has mean­ing itself, above and beyond any clev­er­ness in the equa­tion. To express that mean­ing, how­ever, has become prob­lem­atic in our late date — our cyn­i­cal, jaded, post-​​post-​​guileless world. Post-​​guileless in the sense that we no longer can stop self-​​referencing or self-​​consciousness enough to just be. Enough to let be be the finale of seem, to bor­row a bril­liant phrase from Wallace Stevens.

It’s hip to search for mean­ing with­out let­ting oth­ers really know. It’s hep to mock the attempt. It’s cool to stand above the silly masses striv­ing to do the right thing … Believe, believe in what they do, accept that life really does have a pur­pose in the here and now, beyond the here and now!

Perhaps those who stand above find mean­ing in stand­ing above, mock­ing. Perhaps those who judge them find mean­ing in their own accu­sa­tions. And so on, layer upon layer, meta meta, world with­out end.

Does the work have mean­ing, the place and time? Does a paint­ing on the wall have mean­ing out­side that wall? A tree, a rock, a bird, a moun­tain? A roar in the jun­gle, gulls on the shore? Does it mean some­thing to see a beau­ti­ful girl, up on the shoul­ders of her mate, singing along with the band on the stage, her arms form­ing a joy­ous V? The crowd going wild, the girl transfixed?

Sean Howard exam­ines, in bril­liant fash­ion, more than one kind of search for mean­ing, or process, or project in the wake of Lev Tolstoy. Because of Lev Tolstoy. Below.

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