[ilds] Odious masterpieces

[Bruce Redwine]

Billy, well said.  I agree — and so would Joyce in Portrait.  As Stephen says, “Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human suffering and unites it with the secret cause.”  In Durrell’s work, it’s that “secret cause” that puzzles me.  It’s “spooky,” as you say.

Bruce



> On Jun 2, 2015, at 9:16 AM, William Apt <billyapt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Bruce:
> 
> I've always been of the opinion that great works of art are "spooky". Perhaps the same concept as the Sublime containing terror?  Sometimes literature, paintings, and musical compositions are so remarkable (think Joyce's The Dead; Van Gogh's portrait of his and Gauguin's chairs; Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone) they fill one with a sense of dislocation and remove akin to a sense of terror or fright.  
> 
> Billy  
> 
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at gmail.com <mailto:bredwine1968 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I guess this is all a matter of tastes, but my “masterpieces” (“great works” of art) are not “odious” (repulsive).  The latter I would reserve for de Sade.  A paradox.  On the other hand, perhaps all this goes back to the idea of the “Sublime” as propagated by Edmund Burke and the Romantics.  The Sublime contains terror.  Maybe that is what Blanford refers to.  There’s a good deal of terror in the Quintet.
> 
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 1, 2015, at 10:48 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org <mailto:mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Why cannot a book be both a "masterpiece" (whatever that is) and "odious" (whatever that is)? Try "Last Exit to Brroklyn"? Sade? "Women, Beware Women" (and a red herring thence to Livia)?
>> Richard Pine
>> Durrell Library of Corfu 
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>> Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 98, Issue 1
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