joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> "I've heard this argument lots: that in a classless society there would be no motive for art. But I don't buy it. Classless society is not a frictionless society -- the frictions would just be more interesting: life and death; order and chaos; male and female; the cyclical and the linear, the natural and the artificial......all the stuff that art loves to deal with.
I mean, do people only sing because they're oppressed? Have you ever walked through a grove at dusk and heard the avian symphonies? Have you ever experienced enough darkness to really see the stars at night? Have you ever been in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight? Have you ever been transfixed by a beautiful woman? We live amidst a lot of jaw-dropping stuff. Great food for Art!"
Yes, you could still have a lot of Wordsworth, but not all of it:
(The commune is too much with us, late and soon,
Taking and planning, we lay waste our powers,
Little we see in Nature that is ours. . .)
There couldnt be tragedy in Aristotle's sense, which requires someone of elevated stature, but more than that, someone whose fall questions the established order.
Everything you've mentioned falls into the gee-whizz category, which isnt the usual stuff of art. The issue may be that art requires conflict (inner or outer or both), and where would that come from in a perfectly harmonious rational society?
But I wasnt trying to make a general argument, only that some works like the Marriage of Figaro, or Hamlet, wouldnt be possible. The answer to me though would be: but all the Sonatas, ensembles, concertos and symphonies would. I was almost about to change my mind about Marriage, because there is really only minor conflict there, and the general atmosphere is happy -- but there would still have to be a trivial leisured class to laugh at.
BobW
Joanna
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