POETICKS

My brilliant insight for today is that tragedy and other forms of negative art are kinds of bullying.  This occurred to me when I was trying to understand the value of exposure to the bad in life and remembered how fearful of the night I was for a couple of years in childhood–goblins were going to get through my bedroom window while I was lying in bed and do horrible things to me.  My mother had to get in bed with me a few times until I went to sleep.  But one day I was over my fear.  No particular reason, just the constant exposure to it until I naturally worked out a diminishing understanding of it.

Ditto bullies.  I spent weeks, possibly months, hiding in a corner of the school playground during recesses when I was in kindergarten because some big kid had once bullied me.  Finally, he visited the sandbox I and a few playmates used to play in, and asked who the kid trying to make himself invisible against the school wall was.  Another kid told him my name (I guess) and something about me–probably that he didn’t know what was wrong with me but that I was always visiting that spot.  The big kid said, “Oh,” then ran off who knows where.  I realized he hadn’t chosen me to harass for all of eternity as I’d thought; he, in fact, didn’t know me from Elmer Fudd.  I was instantly cured of my fear for him.  But I remained susceptible to other bullies, for a couple of years always being afraid to walk past a certain house on my way home from school where Joey and Paulie Hayes lived.  They’d picked on me a couple of times.

Let me put in here that I believe all healthy young males are at times bullies.  Bullying is a natural response to outsiders, and a way to weed out weaklings–those who can’t bear it.  The campaign of the educational establishment against it is thus, in my opinion, idiotic.  Anyway, one day Paulie came across the bridge into Harbor View–i.e., for his neighborhood into mine–to play baseball with us, for he was friends with some of the boys in Harbor View.  I learned he was a year younger than I!  So I could not be afraid of him.  More to the point, I made friends with him, and learned his older brother Joey was an okay kid, and didn’t spend all his time waiting to beat up some younger kid passing his house.  I’ve never feared bullies since, though later a couple of time set up by one or more.   I even did a little bullying myself, but not much.  That not for the first time; like every other boy in Harbor View, I’d bullied newcomers as part of the established gang.

All this to explain my belief that negative art acts to make the evil of life easier to take simply by exposing us to evil, in packaging that reduces its lethalness, thereby allowing us to learn it into bearableness.  Or: “negative art, as Aristotle has it, arouses pity and fear, the purgation of which through catharsis, makes one feel better (anthroceptually).”  One feels mor fit to withstand evil after effective art.

That is an anemic explanation, no doubt, but it’s all I have right now.  I have less to say about my three other points.  There’s nothing more to say about “3. A work of negative art (or art adventure like a ride on a roller coaster)  dealing with ugly, fearsome, horrifying or similar painful material, can, when the artwork is escaped, result in the pleasure of gaining safety.”

As for “4. A work of negative art–an effective tragedy, say–will contain details that give aesthetic pleasure,” I need only specify that I mean such details as the metaphors in Shakespearean tragedy, or the melodic effects of certain sad poems–or vivid scenes or characters.

Related to that is “5. A work of negative art will cause a person the pleasure of seeing something conquered, at least to a degree, by art–that is, by an artist’s organization  and expression of it.”  This is just another way of saying that finding the exactly right words to eloquently evoke something dangerous or ugly, and arranging them in some kind of pattern (which will “explain” the,” in a manner of speaking, or make them more coherent, more logical, than they are in the chaos of reality)  is, of course, a way of giving the antithesis of the beautiful a kind of beauty.  That, in turn, will give an engagent aesthetic pleasure, although probably not enough to offset the aesthetic pain of the work.  But with the other positive components of the work added to it, it will.

I’ve left out something pretty obvious, which is that much negative art–all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, in fact–has an ending that nullifies its tragic message to some degree.   Life is shown restored to The Way Things Should Be.  A good king assumes the throne.  The bad guys are buried.  Civilization has gotten through another time of horror bloodied but alive.

With that, I’ve explained Everything About The Aesthetic Value of Tragedy and Other Forms of Negative Are.  Sometime maybe I’ll come back and explain it coherently.

I’m still dragging, so I’m not sure how far I’ll get with tragedy today.  One thing I’ll get out of the way is a change of terms, from “tragedy” to “negative art.”  Negative art would include tragedy but any other kind of art which seems most directly an expression of something painful.

Okay, to start with, negative art causes (or tries to cause) AS (a subject) to experience the anthroceptual pleasure of learning AS is not alone.  To understand how this comes about, according to knowlecular psychology (and we must, because I’m not satisfied with merely asserting that one can experience being not alone and that it will cause one pleasure), is complicated.   Actually, it may be simple, but my own understanding of it is too confused right now for me to provide a simple explanation of it.

At bottom is how human beings become friends.    According to the part of knowlecular psychology that has to do with the anthroceptual awareness, when AS perceives another human being, a represen- tation of a human being, the Urceptual Other, will be activated in AS’s anthroceptual awareness.   In certain conditions–most social conditions, I should think–if the human being who is perceived is a stranger, AS will become passive.  As a result, another representation of a human in AS’s anthroceptual awareness,  the Urceptual Self, which is wired to the Urceptual Other, will copy the actions of the Urceptual Other.  This will lead to anthroceptual pleasure if those actions turn out to be the same or similar to what AS’s actions would have been in the same situation.  In other words, AS will think, “this person is like me.”  That, fundamentally however simplistic it may seem, is the basis of friendship.

At this point, AS’s Urceptual Friend will be activated–with an automatic dose of extra pleasure; that is, whenever the Urceptual Friend is activated, automatic pleasure will result.

It is now obvious to me that I am in over my head here.  I need to write a fairly extensive essay on the knowlecular basis of friendship (as I probably partially have somewhere).  So I’m now leaving knowlecular psychology to make a few simpler statements about friendship and negative art.

Negative art may provide an engagent with a friend with whom one shares a reaction to the pain the art concerns–a character in a tragic play, a persona in a melancholy poem, or a reader’s impression of the author of such a poem.  For example, an engagent might experience Macbeth as a friend by sympathizing with his misery over the death of his wife and his final dissatisfaction with life (even despite the evil acts he has performed).  The feeling that Macbeth is an ally of the engagent against the vileness of life will then cause a pleasure possibly superior to the pain of Macbeth’s bad end, and the pain caused by his crimes.

Apologies for the mess I’ve made of this explanation.  It’s valid, anyway, by gum!  Later, I hope, I’ll be able to do a much better job of saying what I want to say.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll say more about my other explanations, who knows.  Lucky I don’t have a cocaine connection, and a lot of money: I’d probably over-dose.  I am SO sleepy!

“Art for me,” wrote I in yesterday’s entry, ” is any man-made object that gives, or tries to give, aesthetic pleasure, the latter being defined as either fundaceptual or anthroceptual  (sensual or narrative) pleasure.”  This quickly became, “Art for me is any man-made object that gives, or tries to give, aesthetic pleasure, the latter being defined as fundaceptual, anthroceptual or sagaceptual (sensual, people-related or narrative) pleasure.”  At that point, I realized I wasn’t finished because I was still not sure how to treat objects which cause aesthetic pain.  Tragedy, for  instance–which some are masochistic enough to consider the height of art.  Next on my agenda, then, is to show that even tragedy adheres to my definition of art.

* * *

I wrote the paragraph yesterday before going to bed and lying awake thinking about tragedy.  I remembered that I’ve already revealed what I think of it, but not all in one place that I know of.  At the same time, I realized that the question of what tragedy is and does is extremely complex.  Unfortunately, I’m still too blah to do it justice at this time.  Nonetheless, I feel duty-bound to get a rough draft of my Dissertation on the Nature and Aesthetic Value of Tragedy and Related Pain- Causing Art on record here.  What follows will be a list of various effects of pain-causing art that in my view cause pleasure–as they come to mind, not in order of their importance or plausibility.  Later, I will say more about each item is on the list and try to show why it is there.

1. Tragedy causes one to experience the anthroceptual pleasure of learning one is not alone.

2. Tragedy, as Aristotle has it, arouses pity and fear, the purgation of which through catharsis, makes one feel better (anthroceptually).

3. Tragedy, or an artwork (or art adventure like a ride on a roller coaster)  dealing with ugly, fearsome, horrifying or similar painful material, can, when the artwork is escaped, result in the pleasure of gaining safety.

4. Tragedy–effective tragedy–will contain details that give aesthetic pleasure.

5. Tragedy will cause a person the pleasure of seeing something conquered, at least to a degree, by art–that is, by an artist’s organization  and expression of it.

I think that’s where I’ll leave this subject until tomorrow.

I just got finished replying to a comment Kaz Maslanka made about my Entry 184.  It got me thinking about my definition of art.  I want it to be “that which gives (or intends to give) aesthetic pleasure. “  My only problem with this is that I’ve never gotten it as clear in my mind as I’d like what aesthetic pleasure is.  I know it includes sensual (fundacep- tual in my theory of psychology I believe) pleasure–the visual pleasure of a sunset, say, or the auditory pleasure of a Beethoven symphony– but what about the pleasure given by a good novel?  That’s only sensual to a small degree; it’s mostly narrative.

First thought this morning was to modify my definition of art to “that which gives sensual or narrative pleasure.”  But then I realized a way out: I can not inappropriately call the anthroceptual (people-centered) pleasure (like love or friendship) which is the main, perhaps only, narrative pleasure, a sensual pleasure.  Ergo, art for me is any man-made object that gives, or tries to give, aesthetic pleasure, the latter being defined as either fundaceptual or anthroceptual  (sensual or narrative) pleasure.

Another triumph for my taxonomy that I gotta put in my ear plugs to avoid being deafened by the world’s acclaim for.

Oops.  Add  sagaceptual pleasure, a third kind of sensual pleasure, to the above.  Narrative is mainly devoted to supplying that.  It’s the pleasure of reaching a goal.  And, alas, I now realize that my definition is still not complete, for I’m still not sure how to treat objects which cause aesthetic pain.  Tomorrow I’ll discuss that.

Topic: why some people like narratives about miserable people.   A variation on why people like tragedy–as, on the surface, they should not, if my claim that the object of art is to give pleasure is true.

1. The standard answer: one experiencing the narrative experiences the beauty of the ugly material’s aesthetic expression.  The artist provides a taming order to horror, and pleasurable details, for instance, as with Macbeth’s famous “sound and fury.”

2. A simple psychological answer: it results in an “Ah, I’m not alone!” for someone empathetic who is exposed to it.

3. Another obvious one: it produces in the person experiencing it the kind of happiness one gets from looking through a window of a snug, secure house at a blizzard.