.
What is it out there beyond the hearthside makes the animals uneasy at night?
Mundus vult decipi.
One soon enough runs up against the limits of the social enclosure.
One soon enough runs up against the limits of the social enclosure.
People are not animals.
Paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
The Visit: Couple and Newcomer, 1922 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
The Visit: Couple and Newcomer, 1922 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Street Scene in front of a Barbershop, 1926 (private collection)
Store in the Rain, 1926/27 (Kirchner Museum Davos)
Store in the Rain, 1926/27 (Kirchner Museum Davos)
Davos Cafe, 1928 (Museumslandschaft Hessen, Kassel)
8 comments:
Tom,
Thanks for this, poem and pictures -- "what IS it out there beyond . . . the limits of the social enclosure"? Without 'meaning' to (by happenstance), something here might resonate . . . .
6.19
first silver edge of sun above blackness
of ridge, black-capped chickadee calling
in foreground, sound of waves in channel
space and time co-ordinates,
which rotate about axis
place in system, as a priori
assertion, influence of
grey-white of cloud against top of ridge,
wingspan of tern flapping across channel
Steve, Thanks for starting the day with beautiful stately "nines", lovely (unstated) vowel music:
first silver edge of sun above blackness
of ridge, black-capped chickadee calling
in foreground, sound of waves in channel
grey-white of cloud against top of ridge,
wingspan of tern flapping across channel
(Letting the animals out of the enclosure)
Tom,
Thanks for not(ic)ing, and for all your Kirchner words and visions. . . .
I’m still coming to terms with this one, but have learned the meaning of the Latin. (I have Latinists in my family, fortunately.) But it reminded me in a way of the contract I was reading through (it was a virtual War and Peace of contracts) in the car today. If the contract could speak and tell its story in English (as opposed to “contract”), it might tell one that Kirchner could recognize. It’s a northern (from Wisconsin), cold and fearful contract that shows a lot of battle and other scars.
.
ah
no
close
no
end
for
sure
.
Hb,
Yes, that's both the beauty and the terror of it.
Curtis,
Ouch, that sounds like a hard contract indeed. In fact you make the reading of it in the car almost a scene out of the Sopranos, just before the goon with the piano wire arises like Boris Karloff from the back seat.
You will have found that the Latin phrase is from Petronius: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
"The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived".
Or: "The world wants to have the wool pulled over its eyes, so don't bother telling the truth, you'll just be wasting your time and making people unhappy".
This of course reflects a somewhat a cynical view. But when in Rome & c.
The phrase as you'll have noted has had some circulation in the approximate area of aesthetics, especially as applied to the uses of art as a mechanism of displacement and sublimation.
In his Aesthetic Theory Adorno decries the idea that art is a game of Mundus vult decipi. To think about art in these terms, he says, deforms and degrades art.
But, Curtis, as you would probably know all too well from long experience, there's another phrase one might dredge up in response to Adorno: that's showbiz, Teddy.
It's amazing the utility and durability of "that's showbiz". Work on the contract persists. Really, the great challenge of yesterday's car trip was keeping my notes legible so that I could interlineate them into the electronic copy today. But this is one of those contracts that requires a shrink as much as an editor.
Scary, Curtis. Sympathies. Beware long solo car trips into the woods.
I can't get the piano wire guy out of my mind.
(We remember Tony Soprano and shrinks.)
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