Beethoven and malevolent sense of life

[jts]

If you know nothing about Beethoven except his music, how would you deduce from his music that he had a malevolent sense of life?

[caroljane]

You would look up what Ayn Rand said about it of course, She is the world authority on Malevolent Sense of Life.

[BaalChatzaf]

It could be said that Beethoven was not the happiest soul alive. He was brutalized by his cruel father. He missed out on proposing to the love of his life. He became responsible for a wastrel nephew and later he went stone deaf which is not very good for a musician. If Beethoven was less than happy he came by his unhappiness rightly. Even so, he managed to write the ninth symphony when nearly deaf and he composed the 4th movement which was a hymn to an all loving god and an embrace of all humanity. Seit umschlungen, millionen......

Whatever can be said about Beethoven, malevolence was not one of them. Sadness, perhaps, was.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[jts]

You would look up what Ayn Rand said about it of course, She is the world authority on Malevolent Sense of Life.

Ayn Rand Lexicon shows no results for "Beethoven".

[Roger Bissell]

If you know nothing about Beethoven except his music, how would you deduce from his music that he had a malevolent sense of life?

I wouldn't say that ~Beethoven~ had a malevolent sense of life, but that some of his ~music~ conveyed a malevolent view of the universe. Only some of it.

And by malevolent, I don't mean necessarily that the world is evil or a cesspool or a house of horrors. I just mean what Rand referred to as a Byronic view of the universe -- that the world is stacked against human achievement and happiness.

I think a very good case can be made that the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" exemplifies this view -- as does Chopin's B Minor Scherzo for piano -- as does Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor. The salient feature of all these pieces is the violent, "defiant" upward melodic motion in minor tonality. The former represents the Byronic striving, the latter the fact that the striving will be futile.

This is just an interpretation, based on assumptions about the overall character of major vs. minor tonality and upward vs. downward melodic motion. I think the assumptions can be justified by comparing them against songs with words, and that that would warrant their use in interpreting the meaning of melodies without words, as in pieces like the ones I mentioned above.

REB

[Robert Campbell]

She is the world authority on Malevolent Sense of Life.

A remark capable of more than one interpretation...

[caroljane]

She is the world authority on Malevolent Sense of Life.

A remark capable of more than one interpretation...

I see now that it is, but I swear to Galt I was not opening it to any. She invented the Ben and Mal Senses of Life, as far as I know, and she was the only one who made pronouncements on them in her lifetime. I may seem defensive, but Michael has been psychologising me again and I do not want to be misunderstood.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I may seem defensive, but Michael has been psychologising me again and I do not want to be misunderstood.

It's obviously the malevolent sense of life in the Progressive Narrative...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you know nothing about Beethoven except his music, how would you deduce from his music that he had a malevolent sense of life?

Jerry,

In my opinion, you cannot deduce this at all without taking into account the input from the listeners and their context.

If listeners are depressed all the time or secretly hate themselves, they will latch on to any sadness conveyed in a work and interpret that as a validation according to the narrative of their own life. If they are upbeat and productive, they are more likely to interpret the sadness as a moment of wistful reflection within a larger story of happiness.

There is no such thing as a work of art without two people, minimum. The artist and the viewer (or listener). (Note, the artist can exercise both roles, but I don't want to get too nit-picky here. The point is they are separate roles and both roles are necessary for art to be art.)

I believe Rand goofed when she said an art work is an end in itself, then treated it as a means of communication and psychological probing able to uncover a person's sense of life. Which is it with art? An end in itself for contemplation or a communication/psychology tool? We have a real problem of definition right at the root.

In marketing, there is a concept called The Big Promise. That's how you get attention and/or keep people paying attention after you've gotten it. Ayn Rand often used this tactic and made some outlandish claims at times. It worked, too.

She got attention. People read her works.

(To go deeper, there is a copywriting formula for this called AIDA--Attention, Interest, Delivery and Action. You get a person's attention, you stir up his interest and bond with him, you deliver the message you want to pass on to him, and you tell him what you want him to do. You can see this formula in Rand's writing often. The Big Promise belongs to the Attention-getting part. But it is also used during the message to keep people moving along without leaving.)

This observation in no way invalidates the intellectual stuff she got right, nor the superb art she created, but it does tend to drive Rand-lovers of a certain kind berserk.

I happen to think it is folly to imagine Rand learned her craft in Hollywood and learned nothing about hype. But with Rand admiration, it's different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Anyway, I think she did some effective hype with several Big Promises in her theory of art. She just couldn't follow through with total delivery because they were a bit too big. She did follow through on a smaller scope, though. (This is too long a discussion for now, so I won't go into particulars. Maybe later...)

Sex, too, is a great place to see this. Remember that line about tell me who a man sleeps with and I will tell you his whole philosophy of life? That's a Big Promise to keep you reading. Nothing more. It certainly doesn't work in practice.

Michael

EDIT: btw - Beethoven is usually seen as a individualistic hero in the classical music world. There are many stories of how he did not take crap from the nobility. He removed Napoleon from his dedication of his third symphony after Napoleon declared himself to be royalty. He heard thunder on his death bed, raised up and shook a fist at it before expiring. And so on. Rand's take on Beethoven is nothing short of odd when you step back and look at it from a wider context than the Objectivist subculture. In essentials, he should be seen as a quintessential Randian hero. Competent, talented, productive, heroic, individualistic, life-affirming in the extreme. He was even arrogant.

[Brant Gaede]

You have a malevolent sense of life if you are, depressed, full of repressed anger and share that with the world--you are as a victim. Not all depressives are full of repressed anger--causing the depression--but I suspect most are.

--Brant

[syrakusos]

]I think a very good case can be made that the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" exemplifies this view -- as does Chopin's B Minor Scherzo for piano -- as does Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor. The salient feature of all these pieces is the violent, "defiant" upward melodic motion in minor tonality. The former represents the Byronic striving, the latter the fact that the striving will be futile.

Last spring, I served as a judge for behavioral sciences for the regional high school science fair. We received abstracts ahead of the judging and two of mine were about music. So, I did some research. It has been demonstrated that the minor keys are echoic of human sobbing. It seems to be so well established a fact that a science fair project should no more attempt to demonstrate this than it should F=ma. It's a given.

But sadness is a reality of human existence. You can be mired it, but simply expressing it in a work or two (or three) is not the end of life as you know it. I have all nine symphonies, some of them in more than one presentation, and the piano sonatas, the violin concerto, and a few other disks. Overall, they are uplifting. Myself, I cannot imagine prancing around my apartment to tiddledewink music as the highest expression of human achievement.

I do agree with Ayn Rand, that any work of art stands alone. The roles of the artist and receiver are important but only as are the other elements of technique, media, and presentation. Given the existence of the work - regardless of the intent of the creator - the recipient is the focus and their estimation of the work of art reflects their own inner evaluations. Beethoven's own sense of life being whatever it was, the salient problem is what we the listeners find in the works, in toto, as pieces, and even considering passages within works.

[Roger Bissell]

If you know nothing about Beethoven except his music, how would you deduce from his music that he had a malevolent sense of life?

Jerry,

In my opinion, you cannot deduce this at all without taking into account the input from the listeners and their context.

If listeners are depressed all the time or secretly hate themselves, they will latch on to any sadness conveyed in a work and interpret that as a validation according to the narrative of their own life. If they are upbeat and productive, they are more likely to interpret the sadness as a moment of wistful reflection within a larger story of happiness.

There is no such thing as a work of art without two people, minimum. The artist and the viewer (or listener). (Note, the artist can exercise both roles, but I don't want to get too nit-picky here. The point is they are separate roles and both roles are necessary for art to be art.)

I believe Rand goofed when she said an art work is an end in itself, then treated it as a means of communication and psychological probing able to uncover a person's sense of life. Which is it with art? An end in itself for contemplation or a communication/psychology tool? We have a real problem of definition right at the root.

In marketing, there is a concept called The Big Promise. That's how you get attention and/or keep people paying attention after you've gotten it. Ayn Rand often used this tactic and made some outlandish claims at times. It worked, too.

She got attention. People read her works.

(To go deeper, there is a copywriting formula for this called AIDA--Attention, Interest, Delivery and Action. You get a person's attention, you stir up his interest and bond with him, you deliver the message you want to pass on to him, and you tell him what you want him to do. You can see this formula in Rand's writing often. The Big Promise belongs to the Attention-getting part. But it is also used during the message to keep people moving along without leaving.)

This observation in no way invalidates the intellectual stuff she got right, nor the superb art she created, but it does tend to drive Rand-lovers of a certain kind berserk.

I happen to think it is folly to imagine Rand learned her craft in Hollywood and learned nothing about hype. But with Rand admiration, it's different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Anyway, I think she did some effective hype with several Big Promises in her theory of art. She just couldn't follow through with total delivery because they were a bit too big. She did follow through on a smaller scope, though. (This is too long a discussion for now, so I won't go into particulars. Maybe later...)

Sex, too, is a great place to see this. Remember that line about tell me who a man sleeps with and I will tell you his whole philosophy of life? That's a Big Promise to keep you reading. Nothing more. It certainly doesn't work in practice.

Michael

EDIT: btw - Beethoven is usually seen as a individualistic hero in the classical music world. There are many stories of how he did not take crap from the nobility. He removed Napoleon from his dedication of his third symphony after Napoleon declared himself to be royalty. He heard thunder on his death bed, raised up and shook a fist at it before expiring. And so on. Rand's take on Beethoven is nothing short of odd when you step back and look at it from a wider context than the Objectivist subculture. In essentials, he should be seen as a quintessential Randian hero. Competent, talented, productive, heroic, individualistic, life-affirming in the extreme. He was even arrogant.

You can be competent, talented, productive, heroic, individualist, life-affirming, and arrogant -- and still have a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent view of the world. You can even strongly project this view in ~some~ of your music, without it being the essence of your sense of life (though Beethoven certainly had plenty of justification for thinking that God had crapped on him for no good reason). See p. 109 of The Romantic Manifesto. Clearly, this description applies to some of Beethoven's (and Chopin's and Rachmaninoff's) music. It's pessimistic, defiant, angry -- and completely exhilarating, fabulous listening material. Check out the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor or Chopin's Scherzo in B Minor. These guys could have been drinking buddies.

REB

[PDS]

MEM says in post #12, "Myself, I cannot imagine prancing around my apartment to tiddledewink music as the highest expression of human achievement."

I consider this one of your better lines, and, for what it's worth, cannot imagine you doing this either.

[caroljane]

I can imagine it. It ain't pretty.

[caroljane]

You have a malevolent sense of life if you are, depressed, full of repressed anger and share that with the world--you are as a victim. Not all depressives are full of repressed anger--causing the depression--but I suspect most are.

--Brant

Your suspicions are not founded in medical science. Clinical depression (as opposed to situational-reactive or transitory depressions) is a biological condition to which some people are prone: angry people, happy people, lucky people, dirt-poor people. It is not selective.

[Jonathan]

I wouldn't say that ~Beethoven~ had a malevolent sense of life, but that some of his ~music~ conveyed a malevolent view of the universe. Only some of it.

I would say that a listener can't claim that a work of music has "conveyed" anything unless the listener, after experiencing the music without access to "outside considerations," discovers the creator's artistic intentions and confirms that what he experienced is precisely what the creator intended to convey. Without such knowledge, all that can be said is that the listener inferred or interpreted the music as presenting a certain meaning and/or view of existence.

As Rand correctly said, "In listening to music, a man cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others—and therefore, cannot prove—which aspects of his experience are inherent in the music and which are contributed by his own consciousness."

When one can't tell which aspects have been contributed by one's own consciousness, one can't go around making assertions about what was "conveyed" or "communicated."

And by malevolent, I don't mean necessarily that the world is evil or a cesspool or a house of horrors. I just mean what Rand referred to as a Byronic view of the universe -- that the world is stacked against human achievement and happiness.

In other words, the view conveyed by We The Living?

I think a very good case can be made that the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" exemplifies this view -- as does Chopin's B Minor Scherzo for piano -- as does Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor.

And a very good case can be made that those works express different views than what you've interpreted them as expressing. I can look at the physical features of any random object and make a very good case for what "sense of life" those features "exemplify."

The salient feature of all these pieces is the violent, "defiant" upward melodic motion in minor tonality. The former represents the Byronic striving, the latter the fact that the striving will be futile. This is just an interpretation...

Indeed, it is just an interpretation, and there are many other possible interpretations which are no less valid.

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

I appreciate your perspective (and I say that sincerely), but I have a real problem relating Beethoven to Byron. Rand used Byron almost as a metaphor for a tragic sense of life. Teen angst is more to the point in my view. And that's something that generally passes.

Rand's sense of life premise is predicated on one overall emotional tenor caused by some subconscious integrations of metaphysical considerations--and it is constant throughout a person's life once it is formed in childhood--unless the person has a pivotal change due to a change in philosophy or something like that. Or, if a person's sense of life is caused by psychological trauma or some devastating event, therapy can fix it.

After delving into life cycles, neuroscience, linguistics, cults, and a whole lot of other areas in trying to understand human nature, I just can't agree with that anymore. I do agree that sense of life in Rand's meaning is valuable to a certain extent in a limited area. It's a clever shorthand when you don't have a lot of time to probe deeply. But it's not accurate or even useful for much when I think about it.

Frankly, I do not agree that it exists on the level she claims (although I do agree that it does exist within a mix of other things). There are many ways our emotions are framed, even broad context-forming moods. Subconsciously integrated metaphysical evaluations are simply not a major cause.

Here.

Let me show you an example of what I mean in concrete terms. Let's take Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. You claim this work unmistakably conveys a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life. When I hear it and think of tragedy, the predominant impression I have is the feeling you get when rising from the ashes. Heroism. I don't get the feeling of hopeless angst mixed with longing whatsoever.

Who's right? You or me?

Who knows?

But let's go deeper. Do you think this work would convey such human tragedy--or even human tragedy at all--if it were performed during halftime of a major football game?

How about if Mickey Mouse performed it on the movie screen, all the while hamming it up? You worked at Disney, so you must know this exists. (And, Rachmaninoff himself said it was his favorite interpretation of all time.)

Do you really think the popularity of this work is due to a subconscious Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life in the souls of those who love it? That would imply that most lovers of this work would need therapy in order to be able to become heroic or deeply satisfied with life.

I used to go there.

I just can't go there anymore.

I now hold that Ayn Rand was a great artist--much greater than she is given credit for. Much greater qua artist than I even used to give her credit for in my most boneheaded Randroid days. (This is a separate discussion, but Rand's genius is not generally discussed on the level I now look at it. The genius standards from admirers I have read stick too close to the story of herself she promoted--or to politics, and my interest waned over time. It just didn't ring true to what I was observing. Maybe there is a lot more deep stuff now and it is different. I should look around at this kind of literature again some day...)

But one thing is clear to me, and it gets clearer the more I learn. Rand was not a good theorist on art. There are some golden nuggets among her writings on art, but taken as a whole, her theory is not universal. Nor is it even well integrated if human nature is the standard.

(OK, if the conceptual faculty is the standard and that's all you get out of human nature, then you could consider imitating concept formation as a form of integrating art with the rest of her philosophy. This is what she did with Vermeer's use of light, claiming that it mirrored in concrete form how concepts are made in the mind. I believe she would have used this same approach on music had she continued writing about it. While I believe it is true that art does that, it is only a small part of what art mirrors from the mind. And great art, even heroic romantic art, does not always mirror that as its main focus. Like I said, this is a long discussion.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

You have a malevolent sense of life if you are, depressed, full of repressed anger and share that with the world--you are as a victim. Not all depressives are full of repressed anger--causing the depression--but I suspect most are.

--Brant

Your suspicions are not founded in medical science. Clinical depression (as opposed to situational-reactive or transitory depressions) is a biological condition to which some people are prone: angry people, happy people, lucky people, dirt-poor people. It is not selective.

There is no science in psychiatry.

--Brant

but they dress it up as best they can--quackery and all

[studiodekadent]

I have vested interests in this (being someone that at times makes dark music although I haven't used the studio for ages...), but I think Rand was just far too hasty.

Whilst I agree very, very broadly that the art someone responds to is the art which embodies their vision of the "human condition" (so to speak), Rand ignored a lot...

1) The "human condition" is experienced by humans who are individuals with their own experiences. People with very different life experiences will have different views of what constitutes the human condition.

2) People's lives are complex and multifaceted, thus they will likely see the human condition as having several different dimensions and aspects. Art may appeal to one of these aspects and not others, etc.

3) People have multiple psychological needs besides "reinforcement of their vision of the human condition." Some of these needs include "catharsis of extreme frustrations."

And, this is important, people with very different experiences of various different aspects of life can come to similar philosophical conclusions. So the whole "detect a heretic by their music tastes" thing is just stupid.

There is such a thing as a "malevolent sense of life" and a "benevolent sense of life" but someone's music taste is hardly conclusive evidence (or even good evidence).

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

I appreciate your perspective (and I say that sincerely), but I have a real problem relating Beethoven to Byron. Rand used Byron almost as a metaphor for a tragic sense of life. Teen angst is more to the point in my view. And that's something that generally passes.

Rand's sense of life premise is predicated on one overall emotional tenor caused by some subconscious integrations of metaphysical considerations--and it is constant throughout a person's life once it is formed in childhood--unless the person has a pivotal change due to a change in philosophy or something like that. Or, if a person's sense of life is caused by psychological trauma or some devastating event, therapy can fix it.

After delving into life cycles, neuroscience, linguistics, cults, and a whole lot of other areas in trying to understand human nature, I just can't agree with that anymore. I do agree that sense of life in Rand's meaning is valuable to a certain extent in a limited area. It's a clever shorthand when you don't have a lot of time to probe deeply. But it's not accurate or even useful for much when I think about it.

Frankly, I do not agree that it exists on the level she claims (although I do agree that it does exist within a mix of other things). There are many ways our emotions are framed, even broad context-forming moods. Subconsciously integrated metaphysical evaluations are simply not a major cause.

You don't have to see Beethoven as being non-stop Byronic in his life in order to hear (and be able to point to) such aspects in at least ~some~ of his music. Being a creative genius, he was quite good at presenting that perspective on life -- as well as other perspectives. Check out the three movements of his "Moonlight Sonata." You can't ask for three much different movements in a Classical or Romantic piece. Amazing.

But I'm sure that if you've read any of the biographies about Beethoven, you also know that he had good reason for being deeply pissed about the hand he had been dealt in life. Even if that weren't his ~overall~ view of life, but instead just a mood he got into sometimes when he was more frustrated or irritated with people and events around him, it is not surprising that he took these moods out on his piano, his composing pen, and his listeners!

Rand remarked that Dominique was herself "in a bad mood." And she wrote a fricking ~tragedy~ in We the Living, right? So, even granting that Rand had a radiantly sunny, optimistic, benevolent sense of life, she was not above creating characters and even entire artworks in which a rather dim (no pun intended) view of life was running the show at least a good bit of the time.

As for the "teen angst" interpretation of malevolent sense of life, an immature phase of life that "generally passes," I couldn't disagree more. I see such people all around me in the music business. They are not overgrown teenagers, but mature, responsible adults who are quite unhappy about the fact that their possibilities for achievement and success seem to be blocked. Maybe it's just the economy....?

Sense of life is real and persistent. It can be changed, improved, gradually superceded by a conscious philosophy. But many, many people do not get the therapy needed to dig up out of a negative view of life and/or self, and they struggle on in spite of it. They want to be happy and successful, but they don't see how to do it, especially not with the screwed up culture and political-economic system we have.

But let's go deeper. Do you think this work would convey such human tragedy--or even human tragedy at all--if it were performed during halftime of a major football game?

How about if Mickey Mouse performed it on the movie screen, all the while hamming it up? You worked at Disney, so you must know this exists. (And, Rachmaninoff himself said it was his favorite interpretation of all time.)

Do you really think the popularity of this work is due to a subconscious Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life in the souls of those who love it? That would imply that most lovers of this work would need therapy in order to be able to become heroic or deeply satisfied with life.

This is "deeper"??

Yes, I've seen this kind of stuff, including the famous Warner Brothers cartoon showing Bugs Bunny playing Lizst, and I've seen the YouTube video of the Asian guy playing the Rachmaninoff C# minor Prelude with the blocks of wood to help him play huge chords his hands could not reach. And your point is?

You ask why people "love" this and don't respond to it as tragic music? Duh. It's intended to be humorous. Beethoven's 5th Symphony conducted by Bozo the Clown isn't going to connote anything about fate either...

As for Rachmaninoff liking the cartoon you referred to, why is that a surprise? He got incredibly bugged that it was popular and invariably requested as an encore--as though the rest of his marvelous solo piano output was chopped liver or something. Just guessing, but maybe he was hoping the trivializing of his prelude would wear some of the glamour off of this piece he could barely stand to play any more.

I now hold that Ayn Rand was a great artist--much greater than she is given credit for. Much greater qua artist than I even used to give her credit for in my most boneheaded Randroid days. (This is a separate discussion, but Rand's genius is not generally discussed on the level I now look at it. The genius standards from admirers I have read stick too close to the story of herself she promoted--or to politics, and my interest waned over time. It just didn't ring true to what I was observing. Maybe there is a lot more deep stuff now and it is different. I should look around at this kind of literature again some day...) But one thing is clear to me, and it gets clearer the more I learn. Rand was not a good theorist on art. There are some golden nuggets among her writings on art, but taken as a whole, her theory is not universal. Nor is it even well integrated if human nature is the standard.

OK, the more ~I~ learn, the more I think that Rand was a ~great~, though flawed theorist on art, and that her theory ~is~ universal and well integrated. Does that make me a "boneheaded Randroid"? Thank you very much...

I have scourged Rand for her illogical and...yes, boneheaded...comments in "Art and Cognition" about architecture, and I have taken her to task for her vague blathering about music. Yet, I also think that there is as much genius insight and as many pregnant leads in her aesthetic writing as in the rest of her philosophy.

Contrary to the claims of Torres and Kamhi (What Art Is), Rand did ~not~ over-generalize her theory of literature. That theory is easily analogizable to music, despite the fact that she did not (because she could not) do so, and she characterized it as some kind of demonically difficult computer data gathering project.

Contrary to the claims of Hospers and others, Rand was arguing for a concept of re-creation of reality as the presentation of an imaginary world for our contemplation, despite the fact that she and some of her supporters often got diverted into talking about the figures and events ~within~ those imaginary worlds as the "reality" (~things~ from reality) that are re-created. This claim is easily substantiated by referring to the lectures and writings of her closest associates in that area: the Blumenthals and Leonard Peikoff.

REB

[Jonathan]

Contrary to the claims of Hospers and others, Rand was arguing for a concept of re-creation of reality as the presentation of an imaginary world for our contemplation, despite the fact that she and some of her supporters often got diverted into talking about the figures and events ~within~ those imaginary worlds as the "reality" (~things~ from reality) that are re-created.

When you say that some of Rand's supporters often get diverted into talking about the figures and events within the imaginary worlds as the "reality" (things from reality), are you referring to yourself? After all, when I "point to" and carefully describe the human traits and events that I see in the imaginary worlds of abstract artworks, with more detail that you use when giving your interpretations of music, you (and your wife) claim that I'm being ridiculous because there are no things from reality that you can identify in the art. It's funny that you complain about Rand and others erroneously focusing on things from reality when the absence of the things from reality is not only the entire basis on which you reject abstract art, but also the reason that you have so much trouble with architecture (despite wanting it to qualify as art). You just don't get the relational/compositional aspects of visual art, but the really sad thing is that you don't even get that you don't get it, and that you seem to be adamantly opposed to learning anything about it.

This claim is easily substantiated by referring to the lectures and writings of her closest associates in that area: the Blumenthals and Leonard Peikoff.

In trying to make music fit Rand's definition of art, you appear to be trying very hard to get around her requirement that artworks must present likenesses of things from reality while, contradictorily, at the same time you're clinging to her requirement. Make up your mind. Choose one or the other. It's either or.

J

[Jonathan]

Rand remarked that Dominique was herself "in a bad mood." And she wrote a fricking ~tragedy~ in We the Living, right? So, even granting that Rand had a radiantly sunny, optimistic, benevolent sense of life, she was not above creating characters and even entire artworks in which a rather dim (no pun intended) view of life was running the show at least a good bit of the time.

Either that or Rand was wrong when claiming that an artwork presented an artist's sense of life or his comprehensive view of existence. Isn't it possible in your mind that she went too far in imagining what she could "objectively" detect in a work of art and its creator, and that she therefore had some erroneous opinions about the nature of art and what it presented?

Or perhaps Rand had misidentified her own sense of life? Maybe she only wanted to believe that she was optimistic/benevolent, where in reality, her art reveals that she was a Byronic malevolent-universer, or maybe even a dreary naturalist/deteminist -- after all, there are a lot of naturalistic elements in her art, including in her heroes' life choices, and we could say that she may have been trying to hide or deny her true nature by forcing herself to be romantic, but we can see through the charade.

J

[PDS]

May I say that this is a fascinating thread?

jts has outdone himself. Perhaps he is more sly than we (I?) think.

[Jonathan]

Speaking of the possibility that Rand was a determinist-in-denial, when did she claim that she came up with her philosophy, or at least her "view of existence" which she never, ever had to change? When she about two years old, no? When she first remembered being aware? That sounds as if she was practically born with the ideas that she went on to promote.

When did she "choose" to become a writer, and what was involved in the selection process? Let's see, she "chose" at about the age of, what, six? And had she explored lots of other professions and rationally and logically weighed the advantages and disadvantages of which career to volitionally choose, or would it be more accurate to say that the art of fiction "chose" her, that she had a predisposed passion for it and therefore no choice was involved, that she could not have chosen otherwise?

I don't get a lot of sense of the employment of real volition in Rand's life or art. Now, granted her lack of true choices and those of her fictional characters aren't acts of wallowing in despair, but then again wallowing in despair is just Rand's caricature of what determinists do. She failed to consider the possibility that some people are fated to be heroic achievers -- Rands, Galts and Roarks who are born knowing everything and never being wrong or having any doubt.

So, without her knowing it, Rand's life and art reveals that she was a determinist who was born determined to deny her determinism, and to fight for volition, but to inadvertently illustrate her characters' lack of it. And, like her caricature of determinists, she was thus fated to fail, since we see past her denials.

How's that for Randian Esthetic Rorschachism?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

In this last post, I get the impression that I am talking about horses and you are talking about the price of hay.

I am probably not communicating well enough.

Here's an example. I mentioned several times your phrase, "Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life." I happen to think this is not a good way to characterize art because I don't think it accurately conveys how art works in the human mind. (I.e., according to this concept, a person responds to an art work because the work conveys this sense of life and that person is dominated by the same, or similar, sense of life. The sense of life is the thing that gets matched between art work and consumer.)

Then you say Rand created Dominique as herself in a bad mood.

Before going on, let me say I am not attacking Rand, which seems to be the theme of your response (but maybe not). I am coming to grips with my own understanding of art and, from having produced and consumed a lot of it, and from doing a lot of study, I am coming to a difference between what I have experienced and what Rand says I should be experiencing. And I am presenting this difference from a posture of seeking truth. I am very pleased when my own experience is reflected by Rand. But when it is not, I report it and, frankly attacking/defending Rand is not even within the elements I consider on that level.

I use Rand's work as a starting point because that's where I got started in all this. I do not use her work as a standard of truth or some kind of doctrine that needs to be defended or debunked.

But let's take the Dominique thing at face value. How on earth is being in a bad mood equivalent to having a "Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life"? One is temporary and the other is semi-permanent. One is superficial and the other is deeply ingrained almost as a lifestyle. Dominique is not a person with a "Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life." (That would mean Rand, herself, was, by Rand's comparison of Dominique to herself.) She is a person who has a heroic sense of life (like Rand), but who is grumpy and snarky or whatever a bad mood causes heroes to be. Like I said, horses and the price of hay.

Here's another, the deeper thing. You asked if my examples were deeper, referring to the fact that they presented things like football games and Mickey Mouse.

But they sure were deeper. They cut to the identification level, not just evaluation.

They took into account the background where a musical work is performed. In other words, they took into account the part the listener/viewer brings with him as a fundamental part of the artistic experience. They did not treat the work of art solely as a source of manipulation of the subject (or, maybe, self-manipulation of the subject on contemplating the sense of life the art work is said to provide). My examples did not treat the artistic experience as a one-way street from artist's utterance to consumer. They opened the artistic experience road to go both ways. That is deeper in my meaning.

Rand claims that an art work is an end in itself. I claim that, by the very nature of art being created by and for human beings, without human beings to consume it, an art work is not art at all. This is quite deep when you think about it.

By mentioning my own boneheaded Randroid days, I was not insinuating that you are boneheaded.

And so on.

Horses and price of hay.

I will try to write clearer in the future.

I am very interested in my metaphorical horses, but not so much in the price of hay. I will try to see if I can convey that better in the future.

Michael