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LabelKing

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These words, and their corresponding concepts are things you just have to get in the sense that forcibly learning them will never get you anywhere but somewhere rhetorical, and sterile--no meaning at all.
 

Sator

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Originally Posted by bengal-stripe
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht;
Drum besser wär's, dass nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.
- Mephistopheles in "Faust", J.W. Goethe 1338-1344

I am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
should rightly to destruction run;
'Twere better then that nothing were begun,
Thus everything that you call Sin,
Destruction - in a word, as Evil represent -
That is my own, real element.
- Mephistopheles in "Faust", J.W. Goethe 1338-1344


My dear Mephisto - lieber alter Freund - he once also told me thus:

[Ich bin] ein Teil von jener Kraft,
Die stets das Boese will und stets das Gute schaft

(Faust 1336-1337)
 

bengal-stripe

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Originally Posted by LabelKing
These words, and their corresponding concepts are things you just have to get in the sense that forcibly learning them will never get you anywhere but somewhere rhetorical, and sterile--no meaning at all.
Applies here as well:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by bengal-stripe
Applies here as well: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Nameless here for evermore. Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
Yes, the decadent, and gently sado-masochistic ethos of Lenore. It reminds me of when Diane Arbus discussed the ramifications of suicide wherein she stated that suicide was a transcendental choice that should not be the region of psychotic types.
 

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Originally Posted by LabelKing
It reminds me of when Diane Arbus discussed the ramifications of suicide wherein she stated that suicide was a transcendental choice that should not be the region of psychotic types.


I read once that Diane Arbus took a photo of her own suicide in 1971. Not sure if this is true.
 

Teacher

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Originally Posted by Fabienne
From the Webster's:

an aesthete 1. a person highly sensitive to art and beauty. 2. a person who artificially cultivates artistic sensitivity or makes a cult of art and beauty.

Sorry, I don't have my Dudens on hand.


You're right, aesthete connotes someone preoccupied with appearance; however, aesthetic doesn't connote such a preoccupation. Therefore, clarification was necessary.

In answer to your later question, I do have the Herkunftswoerterbuch, along with most of the other ten-volume Duden series. Great books.
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by Swann
I read once that Diane Arbus took a photo of her own suicide in 1971. Not sure if this is true.
This is one of those arcane legends, which can't really be verified. Apparently the police never found any negatives or cameras besides the bathtub where she had **** her wrists after taking barbiturates. It's a really befitting aesthetic statement, however. Arbus once said to Richard Avedon she wanted to photgraph Marilyn Monroe because she could utterly see suicide on her face--it was there.
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by Teacher
You're right, aesthete connotes someone preoccupied with appearance; however, aesthetic doesn't connote such a preoccupation. Therefore, clarification was necessary. In answer to your later question, I do have the Herkunftswoerterbuch, along with most of the other ten-volume Duden series. Great books.
I feel aesthete as a term, and concept--like the idea of rhetoric--has been debased into something very superficial. Harvard at a point in time used to attempt to bar "aesthetes" and "dandies" from enrolling citing "decadence" and the supreme irony is that they are now teaching Georges Bataille and Octave Mirbeau although in a presumably disinfected, bleached way.
 

Teacher

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Originally Posted by bengal-stripe
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht;
Drum besser wär's, dass nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.
- Mephistopheles in "Faust", J.W. Goethe 1338-1344

I am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
should rightly to destruction run;
'Twere better then that nothing were begun,
Thus everything that you call Sin,
Destruction – in a word, as Evil represent –
That is my own, real element.
- Mephistopheles in "Faust", J.W. Goethe 1338-1344


Oh, the memories you bring back! I've read Faust in German and THREE English translations, and none of them can touch the original. It's not the translators' faults...it just isn't possible. I've also read translation/original of Schiller and Grass texts; same applies. As well, the case is the same with Shakespeare, which I've also read in German. I suppose a native German speaker giggles at the inadequacies of translations of Faust as much as I did at the German versions of Shakespeare (which, I admit, were difficult for me because of the older form of German being used for effect/authenticity).

On the flip side, those interested in literature written in second lauguages should read Steven Kellman's excellent The Translingual Imagination.
 

Teacher

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Originally Posted by LabelKing
I feel aesthete as a term, and concept--like the idea of rhetoric--has been debased into something very superficial.

Harvard at a point in time used to attempt to bar "aesthetes" and "dandies" from enrolling citing "decadence" and the supreme irony is that they are now teaching Georges Bataille and Octave Mirbeau although in a presumably disinfected, bleached way.


I don't see how it has changed at all. In my 1897 Universal Dictionary of the English Language (NYC: Harper; 4 volumes), aesthete is defined as

One who professes great love for the beautiful, and endeavours to
carry his ideas of beauty into practice in dress and surroundings.


Unless you're reaching back further, I don't see how this differes from any modern definition of the word.
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by Teacher
I don't see how it has changed at all. In my 1897 Universal Dictionary of the English Language (NYC: Harper; 4 volumes), aesthete is defined as One who professes great love for the beautiful, and endeavours to carry his ideas of beauty into practice in dress and surroundings. Unless you're reaching back further, I don't see how this differes from any modern definition of the word.
Yes, but these days, aesthete is connotative of something like a metrosexual, whether you want to cite academic contexts or lay ones. I'm not defining to a strictly "dictionary" extent but of its ethos.
 

Teacher

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Originally Posted by LabelKing
Yes, but these days, aesthete is connotative of something like a metrosexual, whether you want to cite academic contexts or lay ones.

I'm not defining to a strictly "dictionary" extent but of its ethos.


That hasn't been my experience in the least. In fact, the only times I encounter the word is with great reverence, which is clearly not the case with metrosexual (dear God, did I just type that word??).
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by Teacher
That hasn't been my experience in the least. In fact, the only times I encounter the word is with great reverence, which is clearly not the case with metrosexual (dear God, did I just type that word??).
Perhaps, in my experience, it's simply that to a certain scale, aesthetes today are mostly self-professed dilettantes with vulgar wives making facetious statements, which aren't even funny. I blame Andy Warhol.
 

Teacher

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I knew you would come back....

Oh man, Andy Worhol and the other pop-art tarts (there, I said it) have done more to harm the concept of aesthetics than almost anyone I can think of. Naturally, conceptual art can be a great thing (though usually not my bag), but please...the pretention it has bred is a bit sickening. At the North Dakota Museum of Art (don't laugh), there's an art auction this upcoming Saturday. One woman from some place I can't remember has actually made 23 cans of cat food out of the different animals she would imagine a cat would like to eat; the labels are all marked "PREY" and have a cute name like "scrumptious snake" (I'm making that up). The display is expected to go for around a couple of grand, if memory serves. Worhol in his full glory lives on!

(Okay, now everyone can attack me for being a mimetic...I don't care! It's late and I'm sleepy.)
 

LabelKing

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Personally, I would view this current crop of artistic ferment as nascently moldy. The distinct, and extreme majority of what is being produced under the label of art is common, cheap, and throughly insistent upon itself. In fact, it's redundant--drawing from barely dry movements like Dada, Fluxus, Surrealism, etc. and then trying to manipulate the sensibilities, ever like their greasy hair, into ugly props appropriate only for a Soho thrift store. You have people like Karim Rashid providing the middle-classes with "design" objects that are really middling in quality, and design while overall culturalism is relegated to ugly concert halls, and the local Alliance Française. Some may have viewed the late Roman or Gothic periods as a decline but seemingly we are living in an area of aesthetic defunct. However, I can manage respect for Andy Warhol as his earlier work was really rather innovative, and presented an overall aesthetic prototype, which sort of relayed his zeitgeist (appropriate word for this thread!) well. Yet the recent documentary of him is utterly tacky, making vague films like Haircut seem the most transcendent piece of work ever made.
 

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