Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: June 16, 2009

Comments (2)

Cover, 1922

Another year past, and we’re here again. June 16th. Blooms­day. The day to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s book about a day in the life in 1904 that was kinda impor­tant to him.

It points back in time to Homer, back in time to var­i­ous modes of Eng­lish, back in time to that day in 1904, and ahead in time for thou­sands of schol­ars who have labored to under­stand it and its myr­iad sources.

Ulysses was meant to be read aloud, so we can chew on each word. It was meant to be heard, so we can sing with each para­graph. Lis­ten to each sen­tence, care­fully, so we can dance inside our ears. May your cel­e­bra­tion be cere­bral, merry, filled with joy and song, and may it involve a lit­tle read­ing, here and there, too.

(A great site for…

[More...]

Posted on: June 14, 2009

Comments (16)

Jacket for The Great Gatsby. Cerca 1925

Per­son­ally, I have no horse in this race. But I am inter­ested in dis­cus­sions regard­ing the best of the best. Not that any of them are defin­i­tive, or even par­tic­u­larly enlight­en­ing. They do, how­ever, seem to spark inter­est­ing dialogue.

A friend of mine sent along an online arti­cle about a panel dis­cus­sion on the topic of Great Amer­i­can Novel. The Cul­tural Cen­ter of Cape Cod recently had a bat­tle of the books, with five Eng­lish teach­ers guid­ing the debate, and some one hun­dred peo­ple in the audience.

Some excerpts from the article:

“Moby Dick” had the home court advan­tage accord­ing to Rick Por­teus, who teaches at Den­nis Yarmouth High School. “Two months ago the Mass­a­chu­setts state leg­is­la­ture voted ‘Moby Dick’ the epic of Mass­a­chu­setts,” he said.

Por­teus discussed…

[More...]

Posted on: June 10, 2009

Comments (0)

The Sleep­ing Venus, by Gior­gione. 1510

The loss of art and the won­der of its sur­vival. Gior­gione (1477−1510) left us less than ten paint­ings that can be attrib­uted to him with cer­tainty, or some­thing close to that. The Sleep­ing Venus is one of them, though even this great work of art was fin­ished by Tit­ian, not Gior­gione, who died before its com­ple­tion. The sub­ject, an erot­i­cally charged, reclin­ing female nude, was rev­o­lu­tion­ary for its time, though ear­lier cul­tures had far less angst when it came to por­tray­ing sim­i­lar sub­ject mat­ter. In many ways, we lag behind them still.

Restora­tion. Of the soul, of trea­sures left to us, passed down by geniuses, mad­men and saints. Restora­tion of the golden age that came before, that never was, the god­desses and gods and heroes who once walked the earth, larger than life, big­ger than the aver­age dream, but dreamed of…

[More...]

Posted on: June 8, 2009

Comments (6)

Men­dut Tem­ple, Cen­tral Java, Indone­sia. Photo by Gunawan Kartapranata

Pas­cal said:

The eter­nal silence of these infi­nite spaces terrifies me.

He was think­ing about the heav­ens, the stars, galax­ies, night. He said in another pensée:

For after all what is man in nature? A noth­ing in rela­tion to infin­ity, all in rela­tion to noth­ing, a cen­tral point between noth­ing and all and infi­nitely far from under­stand­ing either.

I imag­ine most of us have these feel­ings from time to time. The immen­sity of the uni­verse dwarf­ing us, sub­du­ing us, mak­ing us feel more than alone. Devastatingly alone.

But the reverse can occur, as well as all of the points in between. As in, think about his­tory, think about the bil­lions of forms of expres­sion from age to age, cul­ture to cul­ture, nation to nation. Think about the col­lec­tive as…

[More...]