Friday, March 15, 2024
Personal Essay by Rick Fordyce in the Seattle Times
Thursday, January 13, 2022
A letterof intent ___________________ koon woon
Statement of Purpose
MA
English
Koon
Woon
January
12, 2022
Statement of
Purpose
Today, at the age of seventy-two, what can
an advanced degree in English literature do for me? Surely the practical uses
of this advanced degree will be limited. So, I need to ask myself the purpose
of literature itself. For me, literature is the closest thing to a description
and guidebook to the human enterprise. Civilizations rise and fall, people are
displaced, blend together, and people start or abandon different social,
political, and aesthetic enterprises. What is touted in one era may be of
little regard in another. How a people and an empire be measured as great or as
pernicious depends on the point of view. But in its basic premises, literature
for me is more than a sociological or a biological study of humans in groups.
It is a record and sometimes a debate over vying thoughts, insights, and beauty
that capture all aspects of the human enterprise in literary forms, such as
novels, poems, plays, and other works
America, a relatively newcomer on world
stage as an empire and civilization, but no one refutes the fact that it is the
most powerful of nations the world as ever seen. The best descriptions of it is
a democracy, a land of many voices, harmonious as well as cacophonous. Its
spirit has been fair and generous. It has stood up to oppression of many kinds
for itself and for weaker entities. Its reach and projection by land, air, sea,
and space is truly remarkable. And that “policeman of the world” is never
asleep in advocating and defending democracies. Its adversaries ought to
tremble in his boots when he just think of a fleet of aircraft carriers. On the
other hand, power can be misused when its deployment is easier to be unleashed
rather than diplomacy or cooperation It can be like “a bull in a china shop”
breaking fragile things of value without even the conception of it.
I was born in a small village in China
that had no running water or electricity, I was in China as a small boy during
the Korean War and its aftermath when China was not a member of the UN and was
viewed as an enemy of the United States. When famine and bad governmental
policies ravaged China in the late 1950s, no one came to its aid and over 40
million Chinese starved to death. The excuse was simple enough. It was a
Communist country. Then in 1960, I immigrated alone to join my family who was
already in America. This oddity and inconvenience is a result of the
immigration and racial injustices done to the Chinese in this country. One only
needs to look up The Chinese Exclusion Act in US history.
But this is not the reason I want to study
American literature in UNO. I don’t want to embarrass anyone or myself to say
that I had my share of bad luck with mental illness and consequently been
homeless 3 times, locked up in psychiatric hospitals, and relegated to halfway
houses. Nor do I want to complain about living in a tenement for seven years in
a 10’ x 10’ room, wherein I cook, ate, slept, and studied for 7 years, and
wrote an award-winning book of poems that was used as instructional material in
college. And I washed my laundry by hand and hung it to dry in my room. The
reason I want to study American literature is to ground myself better in it and
hopefully contribute something of my own. If America is great, let’s keep it
great.
Friday, January 7, 2022
"The Warsaw Pact" by Koon Woon
The
Warsaw Pact
There
are losers from Eastern Europe living in this apartment building, as well as
Asians, and Blacks and a couple of indigenous people. We are sometimes a
conflicting community. But the Whites, albeit poor, rule. The Russian is seldom
home for this reason? I am China-born Chinese and my age should command
respect, but it doesn’t. Things are not like they are in the old country.
In
some ways, this is a Jean-Paul Sartre story. There are a few viable exits and so
we wait for Godot. Sometimes one can smell death coming on and sometimes one
can narrow it down to which of the nine floors. And when an occupant is not
seen for a prolonged period of time, their worried relatives will find a
putrefying mess in that room. And so it goes, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
It
seems though that the formula 3% Chinese living here is both admired and
resented. According to Emily the Black lady with one functioning eye, the Whites
and the Chinese got all the money. It could be so, but the Chinese who don’t
play along with the white agenda remain in Chinatown, where massage parlors
mushroom in recent times when smuggled aliens are well hidden in the Chinatown conclave
where the police seldom assess unless it is horrendous enough of a crime such
as Wah Mee.
There
are all kinds of misconceptions here, of course. Approximately half of the people
here are disabled and of those, half are mentally ill, and the other half are
seniors enough they either don’t care or unable to care. But it is like Roethke’s
“Root Cellar,” the Congress of stink here struggles to survive.
(To
be continued…)
-
Koon Woon
January
7, 2022
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Lewton Jones
Lewton
Thomas Jones
19th Century
American Poetry
Graduate Paper
Edgar Allen Poe and Emily
Dickinson wrote poems that explored the idea of death. Two poems that I will
discuss by these two poets are “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Dickinson
and “Spirits of the Dead” by Poe. I will compare these two poems and hopefully
give insights in how these two poets used language in poetic form to try and
understand death. The poems will be examined line by line and commented upon.
Line
one in the poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death” begins;
“Because I could not stop for
Death, He kindly stopped for me.”
Poe’s
poem “Spirits of the Dead” begins with;
“Thy soul shall find itself
alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone.”
The first line in Dickinson is a statement
that appears first person. Death is personified as a courteous being that
treats her kindly even though she would not stop for it. The word “because”
implies that she the speaker is in need of explaining why she could not stop
for death. Poe’s first line implies second person being addressed --probably
the reader. He writes that the soul shall find itself alone. The word soul
implies a spiritual difference to the body. (Biblically) The soul is alone and
has “deep thoughts of the grey tombstone” which assumes that the soul can
contemplate its own grave and is alone.
The
second lines of Dickinson’s poem continue;
“The carriage held but just
our selves And Immortality.”
She creates a view of a carriage which might
be a coffin or at least a metaphor for some transfer to somewhere. She uses the
word “held” which implies a secured state of being as well as “ourselves” which
seems to mean all people. Dickinson separates death from immortality, however,
and it appears to be a passenger. Poe’s second lines in “spirits of the Dead”
feel lonelier than Dickinson’s;
“Not one, of all the crowd,
to pry Into thine hour of secrecy.”
Poe
suggests that the soul is not privy to any clues of death as it is in a crowd
of other spirits who don’t have any knowledge of your death ,which is a
secret.
The
third line (2nd Stanza) in Dickinson’s poem continues;
“We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too, For his
civility.”
The
carriage on this journey is in no hurry-- in fact there is no indication of no
real urgency (“no haste”). We assume that death is the driver and is a civil
one, -- as the voice in the poem relaxes from earthly duties such as work into
more leisurely things in life. Death is
polite for Dickinson so far in the poem. Poe’s next lines - (2nd
stanza), seems to suggest a certain empathy from the other side as well;
“Be silent in that solitude,
which is not loneliness.”
To
be silent sounds like a suggestion to be patient or submissive to the soul’s
inevitable journey. The difference between Poe and Dickinson is that Poe’s
death so far is invisible and dreamlike whereas Dickinson’s seems to represent
real objects and real people we are more likely to encounter in our waking
reality. Poe suggests some ambiguous kindness in that the solitude presented is
not lonely. The next lines explain why;
“For then The Spirits of the
dead, who stood In life before thee,
are again In death around thee,
and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still.”
When Dickinson refers to others as ourselves,
Poe in these lines sees the other participants in this realm as spirits who
stood before him that could be people who are no longer living or other
strangers. The uniting of the dead surrounds the lone soul in Poe’s lines with
a will or power to put darkness around you (“overshadow) which tells you to be
still. Even when Poe suggests a natural connection with other spirits, his
images of death are more ominous than Dickinson’s so far in these two poems.
In
stanza three Dickinson writes;
“We passed the school, where
children strove At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of
grazing grain, We passed the setting sun.”
Dickinson appears to be looking at scenes of
her life, her childhood in regard to recess and being in a ring. The next line
could be about fruition or maturity such as the harvest of fields of wheat or
grain. The word “passing” suggests dying and is used in that way when someone
dies. The sun setting is the end of the day or the end of the speaker’s life .
In comparison, Poe’s first lines in the third stanza the poet say;
“The night, though clear,
shall frown, And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in
heaven.”
Poe’s
‘place in time’ is dark like the night, and even though you can then imagine
the night ‘frowning’ as if in an unfriendly look to the lonely soul. This soul
has come into a void which has no stars unlike the night which was heavenly
before death with stars shining down. Poe is describing death at this point of
the poem as an unsure deliverance to a strange place, whereby Dickinson has no
fear in her visions thus far.
The
fourth stanza of Dickinson continues the poem’s direction;
Or rather he passed
us; The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer
my gown, My tippet only tulle.”
Dickinson
now suggests a discomfort that is she is chilly because she is not warmly
dressed. Her garments are more appropriate for a wedding which could mean a new
beginning rather than a funeral or ending. She seems to welcome death as her
new life. The ’he’ in her line could be a male suitor who controls the action
in her passing or death in accordance with God. Poe using the word heaven
suggests the same sentiment. Both poets have a sense of providence. Poe’s next
lines from stanza four confer with this notion;
“With light like hope to
mortals given”
He
then darkens this providence with the next lines;
“ But their red orbs,
without beam,
To thy weariness shall
seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.”
The red orbs (stars) could be the eyes of the
dead /spirits around the soul which are now very tired (rather than chilled
like Dickinson) rather hot like a burning (Hell?) “like a fever” which grabs
onto the soul forever. Poe might be describing death or the consequences which
wait for the soul after death. Poe’s death feels much more dramatic and
solitary than Dickinson’s at this point in the two poems.
The
fifth stanza of Dickinson’s poem on death says;
“We paused before a house
that seemed A swelling of the ground;
The roof
was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound.”
Dickinson
seems comfortable with her death in these lines about where her new house or
grave is to be. She has personified
death and cannot stop him. It appears to be a sort of house that is seen from a
distance in relation to her unexpected death. She is unprepared and getting
closer which is a little frightening. The roof could be the grave stone over the
mound of earth. Dickinson however is much more stoic than Poe and less
dramatic. She accepts her plot in the earth. Poe seems to be a wandering spirit
in an unknown place.
The
fifth stanza in Poe’s poem on death concludes;
“Now are thoughts
though shalt not banish,
Now are visions
ne’er to vanish; from thy spirit shall they pass No more,
like dew-drop from
the grass.”
The
word “now” is in present tense, implying that the place is present, as well.
The thoughts of the soul continue forever as well as one’s visions-- which for
Poe were not very forgiving considering his tortured life. The things which you
bring from this life into the next are permanent for Poe. Unlike Dickinson’s final death home, his
version of death was one of no rest. Poe’s imagery, such as in the’ sparkle of
dew on the grass’ (stars) is poetic, and its poetic ‘beauty’ could also follow
the soul into the next world, although he continues with his ominous settings.
The
last stanza in Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death concludes
with;
“Since then ‘tis
centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the
horses’ heads Were toward eternity.”
Time
stands still in Dickinson’s death as centuries pass and she sleeps away. She also remembers the journey to death in
the carriage with the horses’ heads as a projection to where her soul was going
which was eternity. She seems to say that eternity is inevitable and defies
explaining anymore in earthly terms anymore
than the narrative description of directions that a horse in this
corporal life might take. When Dickinson uses the word “surmised” we assume
that a material brain was postulated something. If Dickinson is already dead
then the interior mind talking is really her soul which is really living in her
poem and its words. It is possible that she wrote the poem in speculation it
would be read after her death as a musing on where she will be. Her overall
theme seems to be that death is not to be feared which is quite different than
Poe’s. Dickinson sees death as a natural part of the endless cycle of nature.
Her personality and religious beliefs may also reflect her intentions in the
poem. Dickinson was a spinster-- reclusive and introspective --and tended to
write about her isolation and death, but she was also a Bible reader and a
Christian and that could explain her optimism about dying and seeing death as a
friend.
The
last stanza of Poe’s Poem “Spirits of the Dead” suggests a different view;
“The breeze, the
breath of god, is still, And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy,
shadowy, yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs
upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries.”
Once again we see Poe’s writing style as much
more dramatic than narrative as Dickinson’s, as well as his vision of death.
The description of the place of death for Poe is spooky and feels gothic but he
refers to God having a breath which presumes a life force like the Holy Spirit
which is Christian in context. Poe’s eternity is still—and, unlike Dickinson,
he was concerned with ,though natural, yet somewhat uncomfortable visuals
surrounding the actual grave, which embellishes the place where the dead are in
waiting. The “token” could be a symbol for the living to witness. Poe’s is
shadowy and with the repetition it underscores this gloomy place where trees
stand above graves. Poe used words for effect more than meaning so it is the poem
itself that holds the meaning.
The
last line “A mysteries of mysteries” is different than Dickinson’s conclusion
which states that she understands how time works and how she will feel in her
resting place. Poe compares the hell and heaven in this life as counterpoints
to what is to become and concludes that both are synonymous in meaning: “High
thrones in the heaven’ and “red orbs, without beam. “ The rest is imagery for
Poe, who unlike Dickinson, kept the poem independent of the didactic and the
philosophic truth construct. He felt poems should be short and build to a high
point and then end. Dickinson wrote her poems almost biographically. Death
could be the ultimate drama for Poe in his poem while Dickinson might have just
liked the word play using death as a gentleman coming to see her to take a ride
in his carriage and possibly marry.
Dickinson seems confessional in her view of
death while Poe is entertaining the reader with his vision of it because for
Poe only the spirits of the dead know the answers where as Dickinson seems
convinced that she can see through the veil of life’s question via her academic
intellectualism and poetic use of language. For Dickinson the contemplation
regarding death in the poem “Because I could not Stop for Death” is an experience
she is looking back on; “tis centuries”. Poe was pursuing death simply by his
lifestyle. His poetry was a livelihood as well as an art form. Dickinson used
poetry to imitate life and was free to write without it needing to provide her
sole financial source of survival. Poe
was in the public eye and his internal thoughts needed to be at least
entertaining. Dickinson had the interior privilege due to a secure life at
Amherst to muse upon life at a distance and keep her sensitivity in a drawer.
Death was a visitor for Emily but for Poe it was a continuation of his fight
with God and the suffering and fear of loss. Emily suffered from the death of
loved ones as well, but she was not in the trenches of everyday life in so much
the way Poe was.
In
conclusion, it is possible within these poems to get a glimpse of how people
like Poe and Dickinson viewed death. In the two poems discussed, we can surmise
that they both were poetically preoccupied with death personally and they
expressed it so in their work. Death was a suitor in a carriage for Dickinson
and for Poe it was a graveyard dark with spirits. In both poems death is
present in the here and after. They are interior poems, describing death in an
abstract way using nature and human made symbols as their metaphors.
In a letter Dickinson wrote; “A single thread
joins mighty to meek. Death, Exhilaration and the Perfidies of the Universe
make companions of housewife and statesman. Thought and Soul-Companions share a
solitary room. It’s a Window a mirror, its door defy the key no gate secure
it’s garden except Eternity.” (August 1, On the Death of Abraham Lincoln)
Bauldelaire said of Poe” It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the
beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its spectacles as a revelation
as something in correspondence with heaven. The insatiable thirst for
everything that lies beyond, and that life reveals is the most living proof of
our immortality. It is at the same time by poetry and through poetry, by and
through music that the soul glimpses the splendors of the tomb. Edgar Allen Poe
was also absorbed by the idea of unity-a fond dream.” (Bauldelaire on Poe 1952
Pg 140-142))
Sunday, December 26, 2021
koon woon
Saturday, April 10, 2021
Lewton Jones' on deconstructing Plato
Lewton Thomas Jones
Philosophy of
Literature
Dr. Smyth
Deconstructing Plato
Plato was a sophist first most and a changeling of
socio-political dialect. He tells us in
The Apology that he was present in court at the trial of his mentor Socrates,
he also says he was one of the friends who offered money to help Socrates. In the Phaedo he appears that he was absent
from the taking of poison by Socrates in prison due to being sick at the
time. Was this just artistic
literature? We need to dig deep to find out
who Plato really was and what motivated him and understand what appears to be a
very strange metamorphis concerning the stages in his life. Xenophon mentions that Plato was in the inner
Socratic circle. Aristotle writes that
as a young man Plato had been a pupil of the Heractitean philosopher
Cratylus. Plato, according to the
Alexandrian chronologists, was born in 427 BC and died in 346 BC aged
eighty-one.
Plato lived during the Peloponnesian war during the
oligarchy of the “Thirty” set up by the Spartan in Athens at the end of the
war. Plato seems to have two faces. In his dialogues to Charmides and Gridas
(friends of Socrates?) he alludes that he was a close relative of the “two”
oligarchs which seem to be the genesis to his extreme rules regarding Athena
democracy. Plato traveled after
Socrates’ death, visiting Megara and his friend Eucleodes. He visited Cyrene for mathematical
camaraderie with Theodorus. He went to
Egypt acquiring priestly knowledge. In Italy
he mingled with the Pythagoreans. He is
even rumored to have visited the Persian Magi and other magis. This hardly
sounds like the doubting philosopher who uses Socratic dialogue to show that
nobody really knows anything. Plato was calculated and aware of power.
In the Symposium we are told philosophy is a love of wisdom
(not superstition or political dogma). It
is about passion, truth, and _____ i.e., the collect of the human soul. (A soul according to Plato is in distress
with “a half formed idea” . . . is likened to the pains of childbirth, and the
philosopher is presented, in his relation to his disciples, as the midwife of
the spirit. His task is not to think for
other men, but to help them to bring their own thoughts as birth.” “Philosophy is, in Plato’s eyes, ‘a way of
life,’ a discipline for character no less than for understanding.”
*The mind of Plato
A.E. Taylor Pg. 35
1922 Constable and Co. University of Michigan Press
He speaks of mimesis in his Theory of Education, i.e., like
is known by like. * His theory of
education is dominated by the thought that the mind itself inevitably
“imitates” the character of the thing it habitually imitates.” That said, let us see Plato as the
manifestation of his ideas and their true fruition. * “Just because the
aspiration after wisdom is the fundamental expression of the mind’s true
nature, it cannot be followed persistently without resulting in a
transfiguration of the mind’s true nature (Plato): Its ultimate affect is to reproduce in the
individual soul those very features of law, order, and rational purpose which
the philosopher’s contemplation reveals as omnipresent in the world of genuine
knowledge”
This individual soul I see is Plato’s own reflection. It is the transference of Sophist, empirical
visions towards the world outside. In
this case Greece and Athens. It could be
described as an intellectualism emotion, a passion for inner truth. The soul for Plato has to do with his
imitation of Socrates and his interrogation methodology. Plato’s vision of morality is based on his
idea that knowledge can be known by the virtuous. The danger here of course is that those who
aren’t virtuous in Plato’s world are seen as lawless and ignorant to the
truth. This changeling imitator of
metaphysics is Plato who doesn’t see science as a possibility without knowing
the “character of things.” This is
accomplished by dogma which eventually is the world Plato logically assumes is
necessary. Plato sees mimesis as
everyday “opinions” a lot of dissonant and changing beliefs in contradiction
with themselves.
Science, as we know, has fixed, consistent truths, absolute,
grouped and joined by logic and necessity.
Deduced from true principles. To
accommodate this need for science, Plato writes his “Theory of Ideas.” He is echoing two premises. (1) Heracliteansism and Socrates. The flux and motion of things and the universality
of truth. We basically just imitate
Plato’s supra-physical world in our everyday life activity. We become changelings like Plato, thereby
making sure he is not alone in the world and in fact the mind-god of our
collective consciousness.
It is Plato who tells us what we need to know about why we
are here-this smacks of Stalinism.
Stalin’s biggest achievement in control was to use philosophy to
convince people they need not look outside society or control. The fixed power is there to be imitated as we
actively learn to obey it and grow to like it.
We, as misguided thinkers in Plato’s view, are to strive to understand
exact ideas even if we are really relegated to create approximate and imperfect
resemblances of Plato’s world of ideas.
A.E. Taylor writes – Science is assuredly something more than true
opinion; it deals with things which cannot be perceived by the senses, but only
conceived by thought.”
This rationality and its sense of external logic appealed to
Plato because now ideas do exist.
Literature, poetry, and art, are just imitators of this purity. Plato, we can guess, wasn’t good enough at
comedy, satire, and tragedy to write literature or poetry so it must exist
before it creates something. This
consistency is not a consistency for Plato.
Venus DeMilo would be a copy of beauty to Plato who saw beauty as
something identified from an idea or distal form just as with virtue. In Platonic language a thing or person who is
beautiful may become unbeautiful by not participating with beauty which in
itself, according to Plato, never begins or stops. The perfect triangle world of Plato puts man
as just man itself. Plato, as we know,
uses his mind to exalt ideas, yet he is imitating the logic of his
predecessors, i.e., the sophists, the pythorgeans, the logicians, etc. He simply replaced dialogue with a stoic
objective quality control. This thinking
becomes a political idea. Creativity is
out and obedience is in.
Pg. 154 Plato: To Totalitarian or
Democrat
Thomas Landon Thorson
1963 Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
“The most striking difference between classical political
philosophy and present-day political science is that the latter is no longer
concerned at all with what was the guiding question for the former: The question of the best political
order. On the other hand, modern
political science is greatly preoccupied with a type question that was of much
less importance to classical political philosophy: questions concerning method.
Greek semantics via Plato created the need for method. By imitating Plato’s language of reflective
perfection, the Western world has become a system of political consciousness
operating in a speculative language of an assumed virtuous priori. This is our manifest destiny it would
seem. Anything that just describes the
world such as poetry or literature is unfunctional because it is not ruled by
political functionality.
Plato wanted philosophers to control the policies. In his letter VII Plato writes “and so I was
forced to extol true philosophy and to declare that through it alone can real
justice both for the state and for the individual be discovered and
enforced. Mankind (I said) will find no
cessation from evil until either the real philosophers gain political control
or else the politicians become by some miracle real philosophers.”1
Plato had a contempt for the working population R.H.S.
Crossman writes* (pg19). “It is clear
that the shortcomings of the antidemocratic revolution were the first great
disappointment of Plato’s life. Now he
realized that ‘gentleman’ could behave worse than the demagogues of the
proletariat.” (Eros and the party at the
Symposium attest to this.) Crossman goes
on to say “this did not alter Plato’s profound contempt for the working
population. Plato remained an
aristocrat, convinced that the peasant, the craftsman, and the shopkeeper were
incapable of political responsibility.
Government was the prerequisite of the gentry, who did not need to earn
a living and could therefore devote their lives to the responsibilities of war
and politics. Plato had a special word,
banausic, to express his contempt for their menial occupations.” (pg 19)
We can see this is imitated today by the “experts” hired by
the rich to explain to us what is going on in the “real” world. Western civilization still imitates much of
Plato’s ideas, politically, culturally, and scientifically today. The new Realists of 1912 made a futile
attempt to stop this madness when they proclaimed “the independence of what is
known from the knower.” Their first
polemic was that idealists (Plato would be one) made illicit use of the fact of
over egocentric predicament to argue fallaciously from the tautology that
everything that is known is known to the conclusion that everything that is –
is known. Of course the dye had been
cast on Western consciousness so that thinking like this was considered
illusionary, etc. Plato would agree, I
am sure.
Aristotle said of mimesis – that art imitates nature thereby
one actions of the character, brings out the universal, whereas Plato had a low
opinion of most art forms because of their imitative nature; removing them from
as he said from “truth,” or the “real” thing.
In the Republic Book 3, 395 Plato also warns that bad qualities may rub
off on the artist who imitates a bad character.
He goes on to show the contrast between mimesis and diegesis
(narrative). His point is to show there
is more of a distance between the storyteller and the story told. This would apply to Plato’s use of showing us
who Socrates was as well. Once again we
can see the nature of Plato. He does not
practice what he preaches. It would seem
he has a sociopathic distance from whoever he speaks to.
Plato Unmasked
Keith Quincy
Eastern University Press © 2003 Keith Quincy
In the Philosopher’s Education, Chapter 10, in the dialectic
Socrates says to Glaucan: Mathematics, geometry, and other studies have a
defect. They begin with certain
unexamined assumptions, employ them as axioms, and make deductions from them,
creating a vast tissue of deductive reasoning, all of it consistent and
logically water tight, but resting on unexamined ideas. It’s the function of the dialectic to examine
those assumptions, and many others.
Asking why and how they can be shown true by demonstrating that they are
deducible from higher order ideas or forms, ascending one scale until the one
idea, that of the good, is reached, from which all other ideas may be
deduced. Glaucan responds: A noble
undertaking. Socrates responds: not
everyone can manage it. We have to weed
out the unfit.”
The question I would ask is who is saying this, Plato or
Socrates? Who is the unfit? Where is the good to imitate? It is a changeling we call Plato wearing a
thousand masks and propelling humanity into a false consciousness that
remembers nothing of history but continually repeats its mistakes. What is the philosophy of literature? You are reading it, but my imitation is
unique because I did not know Plato or Socrates. Just like Aristophanes, I will have to create
comedy in this linguistic tragedy.
Kierkegaard
Translated by Lee M. Hollander
University of Texas Press 1923 – 1960
Kierkegaard says of Plato ____ He sees love as comical like
Aristophanes. It is a category of contradictions. Kierkegaard says “what I shall demonstrate
now is that love is comical. (pg 54) By love I mean the relation between man
and women. I am not thinking of Eros in the
Greek sense which has been extolled so beautifully by Plato, who, by the way is
so far from considering (Symposium Ch 9) the love of woman that he mentions it
only in passing, holding it inferior to the love of youths. (12). I say love is comical to a third person.
It is Plato’s dietetic nature that he tries to put Eros into
the pure forms such as a Platonic love.
Kierkegaard goes on – (Pg 55) (Symposium, Ch 29) if one should answer
Plato about love, i.e., that one is to love what is good, one has in taking
this single step exceeded the bound of the erotic. The answer may be offered, perhaps that one
is to love what is beautiful.
Plato’s absolute virtue in idea or form needs laws to
protect it because it merely invitation and subject to Eros and logos which he
acknowledges as the ultimate interactions to virtue and truth.
Kierkegaard (Pg 55) from the (Symposium Ch 24) continues
“again if I should refer the erotic element to the bisection of which
Aristophanes tells us (15) when he says that the gods cut a man into two parts,
as one slit flounders, and that these parts thus separated sought one
another. There is no reason for the
thought to stop at this point. The gods
might divide man into three parts.
Kierkegaard concludes, “as I said that love renders a person ridiculous
if not in the eyes of others then certainly in the eyes of the gods”
Hereby we have the symposium with Socrates looking like a
babbling clown cajoling about Eros, according to Plato. The philosopher as a two-headed Janus clown,
one profound, one subject to the whim of a flesh party. Where is Plato’s ideal goodness? Do poets represent the illogical that
permeates Plato and Socrates in these dialogues?
AC. Grayling
What is Good
Weidenfeld & Nicolson © 2003 London
Page 106
“Among many Christian Renaissance thinkers the ethics of
Plato seemed far more congenial than those of Aristotle. Two aspects of his views made him
attractive. One was his claim that the
form of the good is the highest being, and that the supreme good consists of
the contemplation with it. Naturally the
Rennaissance admirers of Plato such as Marsilio Ficino identified the form of
the good with God.
God, for Plato, was the laws he imitated or wrote. He could not empirically operate as a true
philosopher without reaching for a dogmatic proof. The poets were a reflection of his own
imitation of truth. At least they knew a
narrative was an expression of one’s self.
Plato, like Freud, felt that he spoke for the entire mind of the
universe. The Protestant religion
reflected Plato’s goodness as A.C. Grayling writes – “By one getting of money,
by honest endeavor in trade and commerce, a respectable sign of God’s favor,
even if such a life was not quite the best that could be envisioned. Plato’s semantics became the Western irony,
no longer just philosophy but religion itself.
A great imitated imitation of abstract tit for tat.”
Aristotle sought metaphysics and common knowledge, breaking
away from Plato’s elite revelations toward “fixing” other’s minds. “A.C Grayling writes, “Another point of
disagreement (with Aristotle) was Aristotle’s claim that since reason is the
highest of man’s qualities one best life for man is the life of
contemplation. “Let’s get back to Homer
(presocratic).”
Homer was an influence on Plato – Homer who by saying
Okeanos begetter of god’s and mother teth’s declared all things be the
offspring of flux and motion. Plato
didn’t think Homer is the forerunner – Hericlitus was aware of this when he
said “You can’t step in the same river twice.”
Plato moved away from the kinetic life to present static narratives that
presupposed a priori that only he and Socrates understood. Aristophanes was able to breathe life into
Socrates by showing the humor of the man himself versus the icon of the cave
and sage indirect.
The Presocratic Philsophers
B.G.S. Kirk
Cambridge University Press © 1957; 1983
Page 278
“All things are full of gods Aristotle says in the deanina
about Thales vision of the whole world as somehow alive and animated.” I submit that poetry is what describes this
animation. Shelly called this embellishing
the mute phenomena which can only truly exist when a poet sees it. The poet creates its metaphorical
presence. Just as Shelley also described
the soul within a soul in his poem “Epicpsychideon.”
The Sophisi
Pg 328
“Aristotle in the Sophist says that Empedocles was the first
to discover rhetoric and Zeno the first dialectic. – By didactic Aristotle has
in mind the sort of philosophical interrogation pursued by Socrates in the
early Platonic dialogues.”
The question elicits from his interlocutor assent to an
endox on a belief in good standing accepted by everyone or most people or the
experts, which he then forces him to abandon whether by reducing it to
absurdity or by showing that it conflicts with the beliefs the interlocutor
holds. If one suspects the motives or
the tactics of the questioner one will be inclined to change him with being a
mere controversialist (antilogikos) which is what Plato had in mind when he
describes Zeon in the Phaedrus. Do we
not then ____ this eleatic Palmedis argues with such skill _____ the same
things appear to his listeners to be both like and unlike, both none and many,
both at rest and in motion?
Plato can’t find logos in this ebb and flow of human
relation. He is isolated from the human
stage itself and the person he writes Socrates about was in the middle of human
folly it seems all the time. Plato has
the same paralysis James Joyce said of the Irish, the inability to free
yourself from that which imprisons you.
Jacques Derrida of Grammatology
Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
John’s Hopkins University Press
Jacques Derrida writes, “Knowledge is not a systematic
tracking down a truth that is hidden but may not be found. It is rather the field of free play, that is
to say, a field of infinite substitutions, the closure of a finite ensemble.”
(Ed 423, SE 260) (Pg 220 Portrait of an Artist) (Pg xix Translators
preface). James Joyce wrote, “I shall be
a priest of eternal imagination transmuting the daily bread of life into
everlasting life, I will use my wit, my cunning and the smithy of my soul to
create the uncreated conscious of my race.”
Unlike Plato, Joyce knew that experience had a cognition that ceded
Platonic dialogue for it called into being a life with presence and
consciousness.
Experience for Jacques Derrida he says (Pg xvii) “as for the
concept of experience, it is most unwieldy here. Like all the notions I am using, it belongs
to the history of metaphysics and we can only use it under erasure. “Experience” has always designated the
relationship with presence, whether that relationship had the form of
consciousness or not. (Eros; Plato’s perfect love comes to mind for me here) –
he goes on – yet we must by means of the sort of contortion and contention that
discourse is obliged to undergo, exhaust the resources of the concept of
experience before attaining and in order to attain by deconstructing its
ultimate foundation. It is the only way
to escape “empiricism” and the naive critiques of experience at the same time
(89.60). Pg 127.
Regarding forms or ideas that Plato was in the wise to –
Levis Strauss writes the symbol had been borrowed but the reality remained
quite foreign to them. Even the
borrowing had a sociological rather than intellectual object. For it was not a question of knowing specific
things or understanding them or keeping them in mind, but merely of enhancing
the prestige and authority of one individual or one function at the expense of
the rest of the party. Plato’s idea that
poets were just imitators and philosophers were the real thing is suspect when
we think of Socrates and Plato in a kind of cult of fame announcing all
phenomena which they discovered first or claim to have. When we deconstruct Plato we see that he is
an imitator just like the poets he condemns as superficial agents of
truth. (Pg 48 & 49)
Friedrich Nietzsche
J.P. Stern
Frank Kermode
Penguin Books
N.Y. © 1978
Nietzsche writes about the birth of tragedy as a duality of
the Dionysian (Eros) and the Apollonian (order). He feels that “when the Dionysian element
rules, ecstasy and inchoateness thereafter:
When the Apollonian predominates the tragic feeling recedes. Plato at least, according to Aristophanes was
justifying Socrates as a Dionysian player who not only played at Eros but
rejected the Apollonian order with laws.
He deconstructed the Socratic world of thought and made it into a city
where laws controlled unvirtuous people.
This need for balance was the swing in Greek culture Nietzsche talks
about when he says “The balance is achieved for the first time in Aescylus, and
then again in Sophocles: by the time Euripides and Socrates come to dominate
the literacy scene, the Dionysian element is authenticated and at last all but
completely suppressed.” Enter Plato who
creates a Socrates he merely writes about and imitates as a passing of the
torch of knowledge as Nietzche states, “in the Bacchal the thwarted god takes
his revenge. Nietzche goes on, “the
decline of Greek tragedy begins when creative ecstasy is suppressed and has to
give way to cold calculation. We see
Plato as one comic tragic imitation of what was once Greek.”
Nietzche goes on to say, “now the old myths ceased to be
experienced as parts of an ecstatic religious ritual and become objects of
rational analysis; the gods and their stories come to be judged according to
the prosy maxims of reasoned justice.”
In order for Plato to conquer poetry, comedy, tragedy, and literature he
needed to claim philosophy as the true knowledge. He then created a world that fit his
imitation of a Greek city. It was now a
Utopia for the guardians of his ideas of what a city should be. Socrates is no
longer doubting for us,instead we have an artificial philosopher who modifies
information to fit the needs of his own logos.
Nietzsche feels that art is one of “the ruses of life;
tragedy has always had a vital function: to protect men from a full knowledge
of the life destroying doom that surrounds them.” Nietzsche sees “Euripides and Socrates ugly
and artistically unified.” The Platonic
dialogue to him is an “effective parody which in their superficiality and
optimism no longer acknowledge the reality of the abyss of suffering.
In conclusion, Plato needs to be deconstructed to allow life
to breath. He is an obstacle to
discovery. His is the knowledge of
stagnation and imitation. He is the seed
of Western tyranny and state control. He
lets mind control replace speculation.
Derrida sums it up very well. (Pg 139)
Jacques Derrida
Dissemination
University of Chicago Press © 1981
“Undecidedly, mimesis is akin to the pharmakon. (Plato as metaphor) no ‘logic,’ no ‘dialectic,’ can consume its
reserve even though each must endlessly draw on it and seek reassurance on
it. “As it happens, the techniques of
imitation, along with the simulacrum has always been in Plato’s eyes manifest
by magical, thawmaturgical.”
We must deconstruct Plato to protect us from the past so we
don’t imitate it for the present or for the future. Plato is just a name; a word; a self-proclaimed
man of importance. The city is still the
city of individuals free to think. Let
the self be the self. Plato was an idea,
a formed a triangle of imprisonment . . . a much to do about nothing . . . a
spectre of double vision announcing its presence through writing and
ideas. Anointing us in repetitive idioms
that are mere echoes of the original moment.
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Lew Jones' paper
Lewton Thomas Jones
19th Century European Art
Lee Stewart
Graduate Paper May
22,2011
The Sower—From Millet to Van Gogh
Vincent
Van Gogh had a childlike respect for the work of Jean Francais Millet,
particularly the painting The Sower. Van
Gogh’s own poverty and Dutch religious background helped him identify with
farming subjects as in the metaphorical image of a sower. Specifically, he identified
with Millet’s striding boy intent on doing God’s harvesting in his painting, The Sower. The influence Millet had upon
Van Gogh that can’t be ignored. The great compassion Millet felt for peasants
working the soil is the main connection that Millet and Van Gogh shared. Both
painters came from religious working class backgrounds but their beliefs in
artistic expression were very different. Millet chose to paint in the style of
the Barbizon school while Van Gogh was largely self-taught with some training
in the Netherlands. It was in Paris where Van Gogh met the Impressionists who
influenced him to go beyond his Dutch background and his mimetic connection to
Millet. However, it is the radical transformation evidenced in Van Gogh’s version
of The Sower that clearly defines
their differences. Although Van Gogh copied Millet’s The Sower several times, it was in sunny Arles that Van Gogh’s
theories about color and expression truly manifested a shift in consciousness.
The
Biblical Sower in Matthew was an influence to both artists with its religious
identification with peasantry—by virtue of their position socially they appear
virtuous and godly in their connection to the fertility of the Earth. It is
here that they shared a commonality. The parable of the sower is a parable of
Jesus’ found in the Bible. In Matthew
13:1-23,Jesus tells of sowing the
earth: “Some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds devoured them, Some fell
on stony places, where they did not have much earth, But when the sun came up
they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some
fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on
good ground and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He
who has ears let them hear.” This is allegorically infusing the connection that
man has with God through the fertility of spiritual growth.
Millet celebrated the movement of raw life
visually transforming the fields into one moment of man communing with nature.
Millet gave nobility to the peasant. Van Gogh was fond of Millet mostly because
of his strong symbolism showing man in the midst of nature and his task of
bringing life to the soil. Millet is famous for saying, ”I was born a peasant
and shall die a peasant.” Van Gogh consistently identified with the peasant
class and similar to Millay ascribed to the notion that laborers and farmers
were noble and godly. In 1885 Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, “Millet is
father Millet, counselor and mentor in everything for young artists.” Van
Gogh’s real father was an evangelistic preacher who never supported Van Gogh’s
art and one of the catalysts for Van Gogh’s liberation of color, which can be
seen in his 1888 The Sower.
There is a mimetic message that both Millet
and Van Gogh adhered to, and though both were inspired, they painted the
parable very differently. Van Gogh loved Millet and copied The Sower and many other paintings by Millet. There was a primary
difference between them, which was Van Gogh’s radiant individualism, and his
break from the academic figurative rules, which, unlike Millet, he no longer continued
to follow. The symbolic focus on a
solitary figure without high social ranking was a driving force in both of the
paintings. Millet painted The Sower
in 1850 while Van Gogh painted his in 1888. Millet was a Realist painter whereas
Van Gogh was an Expressionist with a connection to Impressionism. Van Gogh used
Millet’s metaphor of The Sower as a
catalyst for a new vision in painting where color triumphs over form and
message). ”Ultimately, it was the
sun of Arles that for Van Gogh was a life-giving force. The Sower, a work executed in the blaze of the Arles summer,
reflects a quantum leap in artistic self-revelation. Its theme was a hallowed one in nineteenth-century
painting-- the cyclical motif of harvesting and reseeding the earth, and, the sower,
himself. It is a figure transformed by Van Gogh from copying one of his idols,
Millet.” (Rosenblum-Janson Pg.429)
Van
Gogh’s painting of The Sower depends entirely on colors/perspective. It was
painted in Provence, where he had gone in search of stronger light and more
vivid colors. He saw the south as an unspoiled paradise. The canvas is
dominated by two complimentary tints: the violet of the field and man and the
yellow of the sky and corn. The sower’s clothes have the same tones as the
nature that surrounds him. He is identifiable as nature without being separate
or as a counterpoint... It is all
God. The figure in Van Gogh is not centralized--instead, the sun is central, as
if the bright, yellow eye of God (yellow is the most visible of all colors, and the color of Van Gogh’s house in Arles).
The dazzling array of sunlight and the grass are the brushstrokes of a new
creator-Van Gogh, himself. “The sun is a symbol of beneficial life that
permeates everything the eye sees”. (Argan Pg. 94 ) In Arles, Van Gogh further
pursued his stated belief that “color expresses something in itself.” (Wallace,
Robert Pg. 102 ). Millet’s The Sower
is drab in contrast and was railed by the critics as being violent and brutal.
It is a vision of a proud, striding peasant in an arduous work pose. There is
no grand light or vegetation. It is as barren as the parable in the bible. It
is a story with a narrative of truth and little more. Van Gogh’s The Sower is, on the other hand, exuberant
in artistic revelation and transcends the figurative. The reason for this
departure from his traditional Dutch artistic sensibilities (He admired
Rembrandt’s portraits of the poor, and this may account for the darkness of his
Dutch years palette (i.e., The Potato
Eaters) began when Van Gogh went to Paris and began to socialize with
members of the art community such as Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat and
Toulouse-Lautrec.
Van
Gogh’s The Sower was completed in
1888. Millet died in 1875, Van Gogh’s well-appreciated “art father figure” was
no longer there, and after over twenty copies of Millay’s work Vincent was now
his own man. Van Gogh’s electric and mise-en-scene vision of The Sower is different that Millet’s
rigid, striding hero placed in a natural
setting. Van Gogh’s The Sower is subsumed
in color radiating chromatically in an earth world engaging him. “The Sower pits the powerful violet of a
freshly plowed field against the bright yellows of standing wheat and a
sun-filled sky. The sower himself seems a bridge between these strong colors;
his body blends with the field while his eyes are at the level of the yellow
horizon. The short, almost harsh brush strokes heighten the tensions created by
the colors.” (Wallace PG. 102)
Van
Gogh’s intentions and ideas in painting a copy of Millet’s The Sower can be best understood and
interpreted in his revealing letters to his brother and confidante, Theo. The
difference in the two ‘Sowers’ is
very distinct. Although Van Gogh praises Millet as a basis for sound poetry; ”Ce
qui ne passe pas dans ce qui passé” (it exists) Van Gogh writes to Theo “And
what Michelangelo said in a splendid metaphor, I think Millet has said without
metaphor, and Millet can perhaps teach us to see, and get “a faith.” If I do
better work later on, I certainly shall not work differently than now, I mean
it will be the same apple, though riper.” (Roskill- pg.223 ) The Sower that Van Gogh painted is a
riper apple than Millet and it blossoms into an entire new direction for
painting. The catalyst for The Sower,
while biblical, is Van Gogh’s response to Millet and the random fractal
impulses that emerged from Van Gogh’s hand. In his letter to Theo Van Gogh
explains this seemingly randomness; I must warn you that everyone will think I
work too fast. Don’t you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity
one’s feeling for nature that drives us?” (Wallace Pg. 91 )
Van Gogh depicted
birds descending to feast on the seeds as The
Sower casts the new seeds that vibrate in dabs of blue and yellow. This
refers to the sower parable of Jesus—yet, Van Gogh’s burning sun dominates the
yellow sky, suggesting a warm pantheistic god. The vertical impasto strokes
draw the stalks of grain, as thickly brushed sunrays spear through the
background. In contrast, Millet’s The
Sower is kinetic in posture but static in its realism. Realism (often used to mean naturalism) implies a desire to
depict things accurately and objectively .Its
message could be interpreted as an academic response to academic rules. Van
Gogh was working outside of these rules. Peasants were much closer to how Van
Gogh saw himself, and how people responded to his somewhat motley presence.
Millet identified himself as a peasant, but in fact was financially comfortable
in his later life. Vincent was a peasant literally and figuratively-- with painting
his way of augmenting the nobility
of a simpler life. The active images in Van Gogh’s The Sower shows a painter parodying nature. This was the painter’s
decision to imitate reality or reject it all together.
Van
Gogh insisted he painted intrinsically what he saw and abstraction was not his
goal. His goal was to tell the truth about life’s energy. Van Gogh’s
perceptions were a true reflection of who he was, which was an
individual, an expressionist and an artist.
He wrote Theo stating; “If I have to *paint in the abstract I would
rather not paint at all”. (Roskill Pg.336) Van Gogh was a Dutch painter and
Millet was French, and the Dutch painted dark and the French lighter. Van
Gogh’s reaction to sunny Arles was to illuminate the very nature of his own
being and that, which was in front of him. Mllet sought to focus on only one
subject as a figurative composition. Van
Gogh’s The Sower was a daring
departure from Millet but also from Jules Bastien-Lepage .The peasantry Lepage
identified with was connected to his having been raised in a farming town, as
well. These same agricultural themes inspired Millet, which led to Van Gogh’s inspiration from both painters. Lepage, like Millet expressed the bleakness in
hard work even with all of its virtue and honesty. The man carrying sticks on
his back by Lepage is akin to the stylized model that Millet used is his
version of The Sower. Van Gogh, like Lepage and Millet, chose to lend compassion to the
pathetic, weary features of man as a beast of burden. These are just three of
the artists who were influenced by the biblical parable of the sower.
The Sower by Van
Gogh was executed in the blazing Arles sunshine, a life-giving force. This was
a quantum leap in artistic revelation. The previous cyclic harvesting theme has
miraculously become the emotional property of the artist. Vincent’s The Sower re-seeds the earth but is
absorbed in a color play that now transcends art that is beyond God and nature.
The artist is the total revealer of phenomena while the figurative academic rules
are swallowed up by the power of Futuristic-Expressionism right on the edge of
the Symbolist movement.
The yellow bountiful sun of Van
Gogh’s design is centralized like a religious altar-- glowing in a thick paint of artistic genesis. The conventions of perspectives are
further challenged with an impressionistic pigment of purple counterpointing
yellow. The moral and socialist image of Millet’s The Sower is absorbed into a new vision of painting-- one that is
psychological and compresses images into a continuous weave of paint intending to
collide courageously with the past. In a letter to Theo, “ And I should not be surprised if The
Impressionists soon find fault with my way of working, for it has been
fertilized by the eyes of Delacroix rather than by theirs. Because, instead of
trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more
arbitrarily so as to express myself forcibly.” (Roskill Pg.277)
In
Millet’s The Sower, the figure of the
sower is moving but he sky and the land are flat dull colors. It is a symbol of
an animated figure with the social responsibility to work. The private
collectors would regard the painting as “dark” and “ugly.”” Millet’s The Sower is an invented sower who is
burdened with the artist’s thoughts; but he is a creeping shadow on a ploughed field,
which is only a field of subjective memory. Clad in the costume of the
proletariat he casts the seeds on to an ambiguous dark hill with a soft, looming
sky suggesting hope. These are not his
seeds, nor his fields—but, probably
God’s sky (Millet unwittingly created a poster child for Socialism!). In
Vincent Van Gogh, A Biography, Julius
Meire Graefe observes,“ Another peasant ploughs near the horizon with his oxen,
or rather there is a silhouette plough with motionless animal silhouettes, in
front of a sky canvas in which birds cut out of paper attempt to flap their
immoveable wings.” (Graefe Pg 125) In Van Gogh’s’s The Sower a peasant strides across a field of kinetic soil and a yellow,
pulsating sky with a power of movement carrying the viewer. “Hundreds of Sowers
were embodied in one figure. He strides along, not for you, not for art, not
for Van Gogh, but for his work, with every nerve stretched to its purpose and
every limb and every rag on his body forming part of the action.” (Graefe Pg.25)
The field is all radiant and plowed in Van Gogh’s Sower and the seeds are
thrown symbolically unto life itself. The
Sower has become a historical everyman tilling in a linear cyclical ebb and
flow.
The
lines and colour in Van Gogh’s The Sower
have an ephemeral value created as solid structure. “Millet’s The Sower belongs to the other days, to
the days of Millet’s bourgeois symbolism. Van Gogh’s matter-of-factness and his
heroic simplicity are such that in a few centuries his copies will be regarded
as the originals, and Millet’s originals as weak imitations.” (Graefe Pg. 26).
Vincent would write to Theo;” The little house in which Millet lived, I have
never seen it, seen it, but I imagine that those four little human nests are of
the same kind.” (Roskill Pg. 230). The motif of the sowing countryman came
about early in Van Gogh’s Dutch period (Potato
Eaters) and was bolstered by Millet’s example. In Arles 1888 we can see how
Van Gogh was influenced by Gauguin and Japanese painting with its diagonal tree
similar to Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling with
the Angel (1888)—however, the broken-off branch is typical of the trees Van
Gogh developed in Holland. (Hammacher Pg.99) The move to Arles brought a fresh perspective, as we have seen. The Sower contrasts loud violet tilled
soil counterpointed by warm yellow
wheat and sunburst. Van Gogh’s The Sower is at the right corner of the
painting-- unlike Millet’s which dominates the entire canvas. Millet’s The Sower seems like a socialist strut
compared to Van Gogh’s similarity to an eidetic phenomenological reduction as
described by the philosopher, Husserl 1859). Millet is mimetically inspired
while Van Gogh is an inventor of a new mimesis, while still maintaining the
original epistemology.
In Van Gogh’s painting, the body of the The Sower appears to be a connection
between the two complementary colors. The boy in Van Gogh’s painting blends into
the field, but his eyes are fixed into the horizontal sky. There is a tension
in Van Gogh’s painting that Millet might not have used. The tension for Millet
was the bourgeois response to his lionizing a peasant in a tense political
atmosphere of power protectionism. Van Gogh’s brush strokes do seem harsh and
quick. The cold French hill in which Millet placed his sower is very different
from the heated, flat heaven within Van Gogh’s sower strides. When Van Gogh
arrived from Paris to Arles in February, everything was blossoming. Gone were
the grays of The Netherlands.
Van Gogh wrote to Theo from Arles;” Those who
don’t believe in this sun are infidels.” (Rosskill August 1888). The excitement
of the countryside is expressed in as if the fields were alive with its growing
crops, cobalt skies and the land shimmering, glowing and vibrating. Van Gogh
celebrated and loved the drama of nature while Millet used it as a backdrop for
his narratives. Millet’s The Sower trods
a proud burden mandated by the inevitability of nature and the necessity of
work. “Vincent probably led a double existence in Arles. Perhaps everybody in
similar circumstances would have done the same. His painting was a sensuous
surrender to a strange form of nature, really a wild orgy. ”(Graefe Pg.66) Paris was a different mind-set
where art was its own subject with schools and salons Millet and Van Gogh were
privy to (as well as their colleagues). “In Arles there were Arlesian men and
women, mountains, the sky and colors—things that had to be accepted in silence.
In Arles everything was still shapeless and unpainted.” (Graefe Pg.66)
Although
it is true that Van Gogh was also a disciple of Rembrandt and Delacroix, his
drawings are organized and mechanical yet coaxed by creativity. His was a
responsibility of moral intrigue and the human condition. Unlike Millet, Van
Gogh’s color dominated his feelings and emotions. “His was the result of
profound self-intuition and experience, he was a naturalist of the first
water.” (Graefe Pg.68) The Sower was
in many ways Van Gogh himself projected onto the canvas-- guiltless and happy
as the paint around him. He once said he could live without God but not without
creativity. The biblical sower is a sublimated symbol of that statement and one
that consumed Van Gogh until his death. “He possessed a number of undeveloped
intellectual aspirations, which might have stood him in great stead, but he put
them on one side because he considered them unpure.” (Graefe Pg.68)
The
individual was Emile Zola’s claim to artistry, but one that Van Gogh
would personify past the Impressionist and Expressionist timeline. In a letter
to Theo Van Gogh wrote; “Zola says,” Moi artist, je veut vivre tout haut-veut
vivre” (I as an artist want to live as vigorously as possible-I want to live) without
mental reservation-naïve as a child. No, not as a child, as an artist-with good
will, however my life presents itself. Now look at all those studied little mannerisms,
all that convention, how exceedingly conceited it really is, how fundamentally
wrong is the man who doesn’t feel himself small, who does not realize he is but
an atom.” (Holt Pg.474) Van Gogh’s The Sower
is as vigorous as any peasant could be illustrated. He has taken the viewer
from a grain of sand into the infinite universe.
The Sower could very
well be an individual creation inspired by God, life, and art, or Van Gogh’s
creation alone. Van Gogh created a reality that sublimated his feeling of being
a failure at life. In 1880 after failing at teaching, gallery work and
preaching he had decided to channel his passion for humanity. He had already
studied and copied Rembrandt and the dark Dutch style. He needed the freedom to
personalize a painting like The Sower.
He no longer followed the Masters—instead he gravitated to a radical and
different way to paint. In Paris, he was influenced by Seurat’s pointillism/divisionism.
Before Paris, Japanese prints and its lines and colors influenced him. He had
dabbled in Impressionism but it wasn’t enough. He wanted the pure force of
emotion with powerful color and thick swirls.
Millet,
with his choice of muddy/earthy tones, portrayed the sower as a stocky,
well-built young man –implying a certain working-class nobility and this
characterization came to be associated with the Social Realist movement. This
nobility if viewed from the perspective of Social Realism creates even more
meaning. The peasant can be viewed as a sower of social justice or a voice for
the lower classes yearning for social mobility and expressing this is social
protest and descent. The bright sun of Millet’s The Sower could indicate that he has the forces of social justice
on his side.
Van
Gogh displayed a kinship of anger and ruthless reality that was different than
Millet’s. Van Gogh tried to be artistically obsequious by signing his name
Atelier Vincent, and even signed some of his drawings with the new name. He came
to the conclusion that there was not a market for pictures of peasants unless
he said,”they were--perfumed.” In another letter to Theo Van Gogh writes:
I can see that even Millet, just because he
was so serious, couldn’t help keeping good
courage.
That is something peculiar, not in all styles of painting. Those who seek real simplicity
are themselves so simple and their view of life is so full of willingness and courage, even in hard times. It must
be-“une revolution qui est, puisqu’il faut qu’elle soit.”
(Roskill 1888) Van Gogh further purified
the work of Millet-- taking it from a static painting to a living color field.
Millet
once wrote; ”Art began to decline from the moment that the artist did not learn
directly and naively upon the impressions made by nature. Cleverness naturally
and rapidly took the place of nature, and decadence then began…at the bottom of
it always comes this; a man must be moved himself in order to move others.”(Ruskinp124-129).
Van Gogh’s The Sower was his first
attempt to make an original contribution to Modern Art since his art studies in
Paris. What made it original and unlike Millet was the violent juxtaposition of
bold colors—which were yellow and violet. He was clearly moved by Millet’s
subject and the effect on its time. It was the message that drove him to
imitate but he was approaching it from a very apprehensive place. He wrote to
Theo in 1888, “The sketch keeps tormenting me…and I wonder whether I should
tackle it seriously and make a terrific painting of it. My God! How I should
like that.” (Roskill 1888)
The
solitary man in both paintings has new meaning in Van Gogh’s Sower he as taken epistemology
back to the cave paintings and then to the future. This work appears unimpeded,
without pretense and suddenly freed art from academic perspective and
appropriate color. It is a new language. Van Gogh had imagined the ultimate
masterpiece as speaking “a symbolic
language through colour alone”. And in this sense, it would truly be a modern
piece. He wrote in a letter to Theo in 1888, “ Could The Sower be painted in color, contrasting violet and yellow
together, for example—Yes or no? Yes, of course. Well do it then! Yes—that’s
what Pere’ Martin said, too: “Il faut faire le chef-d’ouevre”. (Roskill 1888)
Millet’s The
Sower has now been transformed into a fractal mirage of thick paint
animating textures and de-constructing the figurative. 1888 was a time of
change in the world. An inflorescence of new ideas and paradigms were constantly
being introduced. Darwin, Marx, the Industrial Revolution as well as the advent
of photography (which was supposedly
infinitely reproducible) changed the way people looked at the world and art. Van
Gogh was compelled to stay informed of these shifts, but was foremost a
painter. The world’s progress was not as important to him as his own artistic
progress. He saw cities as being unclean and superficial. He wrote to Theo; “It
is curious that my painted studies seem darker in town than in the country.” (Roskill,
Antwerp, end of Dec. 1885). In the country he could create using light itself
as a pallet. It was life giving and the light gave to him joy and inspiration
and so it was Arles that became his
muse. His world was a world of pure creativity and he had no peers that could
follow him.
In a letter to Theo he writes;” “Oh, my dear
boy, sometimes I know so well what I want. I can very well do without God both
in life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something
which is greater than I, which is my life-the power to create.” (Roskill-Arles,
early September 1888). Van Gogh was seriously concerned how other artists
viewed and criticized his work-- and it must have hurt deeply when Cezanne told
him “you paint like a mad man.” It is good that Millet never saw Van Gogh’s version
of The Sower for he might have had a
hard time understanding the translucent energy of Van Gogh’s work as well.
*Van Gogh referred to his own
painting The Sower as “a failure and
a glorified study”. (Roskill June 24,1888) Although it is said that imitation
is the highest form of flattery, Van Gogh deconstructed Millet’s balanced
figurative statement into a radical experiment of color and emotional
intelligence whose departure from convention still resonates and documents a
quantum leap towards Modern Art (i.e., Symbolism. Cubism). The student has
become the master. Van Gogh however was unsure of his direction like most
visionaries and carried doubt with him always. In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh
asks; “Did Pissarro say anything about The
Sower? Afterwards, when I have gone further in these experiments, The Sower will still be the first attempt
in that style.” (Roskill 289-Arles, September 8, 1888). That style Van Gogh differentiated
him not only from Millet but the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The
direction was his and his alone and one that created great quarrel with
Gauguin. He writes, “I have tried to
express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room
is blood red and dark yellow with a billiard table in the middle there are four
lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash
of the most alien reds and greens, in violet and blue”. (Roskill,Arles September 8, 1888) Van Gogh
changed the previous narratives of composition and nature into a language of
color theory.
Van
Gogh’s father was a minister and clashed with the young Van Gogh’s passionate
artistic temperament. He wrote Theo that his father’s righteousness turns everything
that is light into darkness. The Dutch influence was replaced at the end of his
life with a new art and a self-exiled determinism. “ He longed for the world of
men. Life without them was blank. Vincent demonstrated this theme in three of
four professions .He will appear in his relations to his parents, his brother, the
women he loved, his teacher and his friend. These relationships, apart from the
one to his brother, all alike ended in failure.” (Graefe Pg.1)
If
we psychoanalyze Van Gogh’s The Sower
we see a boy. He is planting seeds playfully absorbed in abstract color. This separation from the Bible is an
important difference in Millet’ The Sower
which was meant to be biblical. This can be observed in a letter to
Theo stating,” I have worked in the olive groves, because they have (Bernard
and Gauguin) maddened me with their Christs in the Garden, with nothing really
observed. Of course with me there is really no question of doing anything from
the Bible.” (Roskill Arles 1889) The boy
called Vincent is free at last. Free to express his soul as only he knows how
it experiences life.
In conclusion, The Sower by Van Gogh is not a copy of Millet but rather an
extension of purpose and therefore a transformation. The bold stance of
Millet’s The Sower was meant be held
up in the salons and exhibitions as the triumph of noble peasantry via biblical
imitation and association. Van Gogh’s The
Sower is a smile of light that resonates with the sun. It is a clarion call to freedom of expression. It is art for art’s
sake to the tenth power. It is free from the pin- point accuracy and approval
of his critics.
If being an artist is to be
representative and concise, Millet is the victor. If an artist is one who
sacrifices his soul for purpose it is Van Gogh. The laughing sun in Van Gogh’s The Sower is the laughter in Van Gogh’s
heart in which he could create a world where creativity exists for its own sake
and can therefore be the bread of life and the creator of new consciousness. Van
Gogh transformed the fertile seed of Millet’s ground and grew a new hybrid of
visual art in motion.
Unfortunately, Van Gogh did not
live to see his extraordinary contribution to art, but he intuitively
understood the consequences of originality. In his last letter to Theo he
writes;
“ Well, my own work, I am risking
my life for it and my reason has half-foundered owning to it—That’s all right,
but you are not among the dealers in men so far as I know, and you can choose
your side. I think, acting with true humanity, but what’s the use?”(Roskill Pg.340,July
1890)
…And now we are left to marvel at
the colors of his brave, exquisite and elegant humanity.
Je sais ou’ se tou’ve Paris-Dans le
coueur de Vincent.
Bibliography
Argan, Carlo, Art
Classics, Van Gogh Rizzoli, International
Public, Inc., 2004, New York City, NY
(Pg. 94)Print
Bolton, Roy A Brief
History of Painting Magpie Books, Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2006, London
Print
Graefe, Julius Meier, Vincent Van Gogh, A Biography, 1987,Dover Publications, Inc.,
New York City, London (Pg 1,25,26,66,68,125) Print
Hammacher, A.M., Vincent
Van Gogh, Genius and Disaster, 1968, Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
New York, NY (Pg.99) Print
Janson, H.W., Rosenblum, Robert, 19th Century Art, 1984, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, NY and
Great Britain (Pg.429)
Holt, Elizabeth G., From
The Classicists to the Impressionists, Vol lll,
1966, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY (Pg. 474) Print
Roskill, Mark, The
Letters of Vincent Van Gogh 1927, Constable and Co., New York, NY (Pg.230,
277,289,340…others by date of letter) Print
Wallace, Robert, The
World of Van Gogh, 1969, Time-Life Books, Inc., Alexandria, VA
Pg 91, 102) Print
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