I need to get some ideas worked out from this essay class I just left. Before any tendency toward cohesion dissipates.
The first work under question was Charles Lamb's Dream Children, a Reverie. It is a retelling of a story that the narrator told to his children about their grandparents. By the end you learn that the whole experience of telling the story was a dream in the narrator's head, and he apparently has no children. He wishes he had children, which wish might parallel a wish to be able to create true art, as in a poem or a novel of fiction. He is haunted by these ghosts of non-existing things. He writes this essay about children which do not exist (they are in his dream) but they are nonetheless quite real to him. To me this raises the amount of space we allow for non-real things in our minds. There is so much that is not real, that does not exist, but which dominates our lives and thought lives.
In this essay, by talking about an imagined progeny, and what's more, and imagined audience for his art, Lamb creates a sign, a placeholder, for the lack in our lives. We lack children, or an audience, or the ability to create poetry. Those lacks are not even fictions - they are not false in the way fiction is false. They are simply not there, which seems even more devastating, doesn't it?
A. made a very good point about how an audience creates us. I think this may be one of my largest takeaways from the summer. We are only real when we are perceived by an audience. When, in Lamb's essay, the dream children dissolve into nothing-- well, actually let me use his words:
"and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance"
When these children, who were the audience to his story, are gone, so is the narrator somewhat gone, if not entirely gone. Therefore, and this was a point Jeff made, this essayist calls the reader to stand in for someone, or something, that is lost. We are the ears and eyes that will substitute for the ears and eyes of the people these writers really want to hear their words. They have something they want to share with Y. Well, they can't because Y is gone, dead, somehow unavailable. We are available, and so, given the imperfection of the situation, he'll tell us because we're here.
Another point made by these writers, well, made by Jeff interpreting these writers, is that they cannot made art. They feel themselves that they can't make the true art that is the work of real poets and writers of fiction. There is an awareness of the limitations of ambition. It seems to be darn hard to write essays, but it is a skill that can be crafted and forged. True artistic talent cannot be achieved through trying. That talent is the result of personality, or gift, or something outside the realm of study and application, unlike the essay. And, as Harold Bloom, said, "I'm only the critic", meaning that whatever I do, it always comes after the real art. I may say great things, but they are not the art. I may even write the preface to the book, which comes first, but it was written after the fact. I am a step down.
That idea of being secondary is countered by Nabokov's essay, the conclusion of Lolita, which shows how he, as the man who is not the critic, but the creator of the art and the one responsible for its being, has supreme confidence. Indeed G. pointed out that Nabokov seems to present himself as a God, saying, "You critics who will read this book, you don't understand it. I know the subject, because I created it, and you don't get it. Now, let me tell you why you are seeing something so wrong in it." This would sound like Milton in Paradise Lost, when he says that his task is to "justify to men the ways of God", except that Milton asks for help from the Muse to get his point across. Nabokov asks for no help - he needs no help to explain the nature of the project because he is God the Creator of the project.
One last point, and this one was only in my head. Sometimes it's impossible to convey the truth about a situation using words and reality. This is precisely because so much of what we experience is not real. Therefore, I'm intrigued by the idea that Lamb retells this story to us, the audience, and that he probably adds more details than he did when he was telling it to the children. But the story, even as it becomes less accurate and more fantastical (and it does rather) may become only closer and closer to the truth of the situation or experience as it was felt by him. We have to delve into unreality in order to convey what we are experiencing.
Outside of class:
A group of us went to the Santa Fe opera on Saturday and say Lucia di Lammermoor. What an incredible venue. Here we are tailgating in the parking lot.
Inside the theater, you can see the horizon on either side of the open stage. The show begins just after the sun has set, while the sky is still glowing orange.
The first work under question was Charles Lamb's Dream Children, a Reverie. It is a retelling of a story that the narrator told to his children about their grandparents. By the end you learn that the whole experience of telling the story was a dream in the narrator's head, and he apparently has no children. He wishes he had children, which wish might parallel a wish to be able to create true art, as in a poem or a novel of fiction. He is haunted by these ghosts of non-existing things. He writes this essay about children which do not exist (they are in his dream) but they are nonetheless quite real to him. To me this raises the amount of space we allow for non-real things in our minds. There is so much that is not real, that does not exist, but which dominates our lives and thought lives.
In this essay, by talking about an imagined progeny, and what's more, and imagined audience for his art, Lamb creates a sign, a placeholder, for the lack in our lives. We lack children, or an audience, or the ability to create poetry. Those lacks are not even fictions - they are not false in the way fiction is false. They are simply not there, which seems even more devastating, doesn't it?
A. made a very good point about how an audience creates us. I think this may be one of my largest takeaways from the summer. We are only real when we are perceived by an audience. When, in Lamb's essay, the dream children dissolve into nothing-- well, actually let me use his words:
"and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance"
When these children, who were the audience to his story, are gone, so is the narrator somewhat gone, if not entirely gone. Therefore, and this was a point Jeff made, this essayist calls the reader to stand in for someone, or something, that is lost. We are the ears and eyes that will substitute for the ears and eyes of the people these writers really want to hear their words. They have something they want to share with Y. Well, they can't because Y is gone, dead, somehow unavailable. We are available, and so, given the imperfection of the situation, he'll tell us because we're here.
Another point made by these writers, well, made by Jeff interpreting these writers, is that they cannot made art. They feel themselves that they can't make the true art that is the work of real poets and writers of fiction. There is an awareness of the limitations of ambition. It seems to be darn hard to write essays, but it is a skill that can be crafted and forged. True artistic talent cannot be achieved through trying. That talent is the result of personality, or gift, or something outside the realm of study and application, unlike the essay. And, as Harold Bloom, said, "I'm only the critic", meaning that whatever I do, it always comes after the real art. I may say great things, but they are not the art. I may even write the preface to the book, which comes first, but it was written after the fact. I am a step down.
That idea of being secondary is countered by Nabokov's essay, the conclusion of Lolita, which shows how he, as the man who is not the critic, but the creator of the art and the one responsible for its being, has supreme confidence. Indeed G. pointed out that Nabokov seems to present himself as a God, saying, "You critics who will read this book, you don't understand it. I know the subject, because I created it, and you don't get it. Now, let me tell you why you are seeing something so wrong in it." This would sound like Milton in Paradise Lost, when he says that his task is to "justify to men the ways of God", except that Milton asks for help from the Muse to get his point across. Nabokov asks for no help - he needs no help to explain the nature of the project because he is God the Creator of the project.
One last point, and this one was only in my head. Sometimes it's impossible to convey the truth about a situation using words and reality. This is precisely because so much of what we experience is not real. Therefore, I'm intrigued by the idea that Lamb retells this story to us, the audience, and that he probably adds more details than he did when he was telling it to the children. But the story, even as it becomes less accurate and more fantastical (and it does rather) may become only closer and closer to the truth of the situation or experience as it was felt by him. We have to delve into unreality in order to convey what we are experiencing.
Outside of class:
A group of us went to the Santa Fe opera on Saturday and say Lucia di Lammermoor. What an incredible venue. Here we are tailgating in the parking lot.
Inside the theater, you can see the horizon on either side of the open stage. The show begins just after the sun has set, while the sky is still glowing orange.
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