Compost

Note: since this is my Rome blog, I am going to use it for English class as well; the posts known as "compost" are for the journal project in English class and will sometimes reflect on Rome and sometimes on the literature we read... just something to keep one writing. Therefore, some will have greater relevance to this blog than others. This post may more properly belong to Cnytr, but as my English professor actually reads this blog it will be posted here. Thank you for your patience, The Management.

I believe my favorite Greek play that we’ve read thus far has been “The Libation Bearers”, this because it reminds me, tonally speaking, of the funeral scene and the death of Polonius from Hamlet, and I’m sure that William Shakespeare borrowed some from it as everyone used to be schooled in the classics at one time.

But I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Aristotle’s “Poetics” does not seem to understand art. People often criticize the scholastics (and modern people with a scholastic bend) that breaking beauty down into categories so as to explain the modes in which it is received and appreciated kills the beauty-appreciator or it kills the beauty.

Aristotle, on the other hand, seems to think that art – specifically tragedy – can be broken down into a set of criteria which can be called “good” if and only if it fulfills this criteria. Furthermore, what is to distinguish a work of art from a work of engineering built to a certain set of specifics?

Tragedy fulfills a function. It would seem that if someone didn’t go to a tragedy every so often to achieve the kathartic purgation of emotions that he would be an unhealthy person in much the same way that someone who continually bottles up his anger is.

On the whole, I assert with C.S. Lewis in “An Experiment in Criticism” that art – tragedy – is to be received and not used for its kathartic function (assuming that one such function even exists). Art is supposed to do things to you, you’re not supposed to do things to it.

One positive thing about Aristotle’s understanding, if we take it to its full implications, is that a work of art could be universally acknowledged as good or bad based on the set of specifics of its function and how well it fulfills it. We could finally get everyone to acknowledge that “Pirates of the Carribean” is not the greatest movie ever made but a mind-control plot to take over the world. I believe that this is the only way to explain its otherwise inexplicable popularity.

I often find this frustrating at home, I will recommend a movie to my parents that I find particularly wonderful – say the German film “Mostly Martha”, or the recently released biography of Cole Porter, “De-Lovely”. When my parents see the recommended film, they often level at it the criticism of “it’s not uplifting”.

…? So? Is “Hamlet” uplifting? Is “Hamlet” awesome?

That is, I find, another frustrating example of using art and ignoring artistic value for its use. Art does not need to be uplifting! Art is not a happy-go-lucky let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya that many people (iconoclasts *cough*) want it to be.

The last time I was in Rome, I went to this particular church whose name I have forgotten on the Via Veneto. A very macabre but fascinating this about this church is the crypt attached to it – the walls, ceilings and floors are practically paved with the bones of monks and others who died in the various plagues that swept through Rome. The image of the arm of God (bared) crossed with the arm of Christ (clothed, with his pierced hand) is re-created with actual arms. That sounds disgusting, and on one level it is. Death is horrible. But “Death, where is thy sting?” The entire crypt is a reminder of man’s mortality so that he may shed his sinful nature and choose eternity with God. At the very end of the crypt, there is an entire skeleton on the ceiling circled by vertebrae. The skeleton is holding an hourglass and a scythe, and in four languages, a sign says

As you are, we once were
As we are, you will become.

“Frater, memento mori!”

The thing was explained to me beforehand in a “how cool is this” manner, and I approached it with a similar attitude. But when I actually saw it, my first unthinking reaction was one of shock and horror – the explicit visual reminder of death and decay was almost too much for me. And now I think that going into the crypt with a “let’s see how gross and cool this whole thing is!” totally misses the entire point.

First reactions should not be immediately discounted, and sometimes they can reveal to us the entire point of a thing.