Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters
Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters
7 January 2007: Every once in a while I suddenly have an insight into something just about everyone but I has understood since birth. My latest in this line concerns the moral dimension of art. Many people consider that it exists and is important--without really saying why. I've been of the school that claims art is aesthetic--whatever narrative or moral contaminants it might have. The trigger was readin something Chris Lott said in a New-Poetry post: "Seriously-- what's not beautiful about what you describe? A bonsai gripping furiously to a rock, desperately seeking whatever nutrients it can get, stunted, fighting and still surviving is a beautiful thing. Predator finding its proper prey is likewise a beautiful thing in many respects."
Moral beauty, I would have said, but not aesthetic beauty. But I realized that many texts I consider poems, and not ethical constructs (advocature), were of value almost entirely because of their expression of such beauty (albeit, I'd call it "goodness"). I thought of a haiku I wrote about here somewhere, Buson's
Lott's bonsai, yes? In any event, while the haiku may present an aesthetically enjoyable scene, the old fisherman's perseverance is what makes it memorable. Moral beauty. So I immediately taxonomized four main categories of art based on my psychology's awarenesses (its "ceptualities"): fundaceptual art (pure aesthetic art whose aim is sensual pleasure), sagaceptual art (narrative art), evaluceptual art (art whose aim is to reveal moral goodness) and pluraceptual art (art comprised of two or more of the other three arts, as most art is).
I tend (self-congratualtingly) to believe that ordinary things are hard for me to understand because I have to understand them in conjunction with much more than others do. I also need to understand them down to their most elementary constituents, so tend to understand much down to too few such constituents. Consequently, I have to expand my understanding from time to time.
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