Dan Schneider on Fri, 24 Aug 2001 08:12:28 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] S&D Redivivus! Willy vs. Wally! A New Essay! |
http://www.cosmoetica.com/S&D.htm#S3-DES3 S3-DES3 Shakespeare, Stevens, & The Problem With Greatness Copyright © by Dan Schneider, cosmoetica@att.net , 8/23/01 Bonus Bonus #2 Bonus #3 Let me propose that 1 can learn far more from a study of the near-great in human endeavors than from the great. This may, initially, strike many as odd because logic would seem to dictate that the better 1 is at something the more it has to offer the layety in terms of insights into its subject matter & its creation. Au contraire! Well, at least at such a high level. When 1 speaks of the difference between lower level activities- say between the bad & passable or the good & very good- commonsense holds true. 1 does 99% of the time learn more from a better endeavor (in this case art or poetry). Yet there the learning opportunity comes from both the strengths & weaknesses of the poem. There is a balance. But when that balance skews too far such opportunities dissipate. Now, this is no problem with a horrid work of art. A piece of doggerel may be rancid & offer nothing good from which to draw- BUT, its terribility is so manifest that it’s a relatively easy matter to not duplicate it. The other end is where problems occur. Excellence is very difficult to reproduce- for an amateur or a professional. In a great work of art or poem (especially, since it is the highest art & least dependent upon the physical) the excellence is so abundant & the bad so little that learning opportunities are few. Extreme excellence or greatness, therefore, is fundamentally different from extreme ineptitude- not just in the obvious quality but in the explicability of it. But really- just how is it different? This is the point of this essay! While 1 can always find words to pillory the bad, greatness carries with it, almost always, the ineffable. There is ever a bit of mystery as to why something moves up that last notch or 2 from excellent or near-great to great- even if the majority of its essence is explicable; but badness is absurdly plain. And since we all know that learning is the hoped-for byproduct of failure the dilemma of greatness sits thumbing its nose at the hordes of mortal would-be artists & poets. Let us now examine my initial proposal- & qualify it. 1 cannot only learn more from the near-great than from the great, but 1 can also learn more about greatness from the near-great than from the great. The reasoning is the same: perfection borders the immortal & ineffable. Near-greatness is close, but its very flaws allow us to see where the artist/poet was going & possibly how & why he both failed greatness- but nearly attained it. It’s a near-parallel to the old proposition about God: if 1 could truly understand the Divine it would no longer be Divine- but angels plague us. So, with proposition in hand, let us now scan about for examples of greatness & its lesser cousin.... _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold