Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Sep 6, 2007, at 7:27 AM, Ted Winslow wrote:
>
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> >> My objection is your and Joanna's implicit assumption (which I don't
> >> think you hold -- but your words surely carry it) that your judgments
> >> are valid from some perspective "outside" human perception and
> >> judgment
> >> -- that there is/would be something beautiful about the B-Minor or
> >> the
> >> arc of a dolphin even if humans did not exist. Both of you
> >> anthropomorphize the Cosmos itself.
> >
> > There's a whole tradition in thought, a tradition to which Marx
> > belongs, that makes this assumption.
>
> "You call it rain
> but the human name
> doesn't mean shit to a tree."
> - Jefferson Airplane
An acquaintance tells me he once attended a concert performance of John CAge's 4'33" and that it was indeed a beautiful composition. (The pianist even took a break between movements.) That piece won't, I would assume, work on the radio or a record. I don't know how it might work on TV. But obviously (?) the content is a relationship between audience and performance -- and I would assume this is also the case with the B-Minor or Vivaldi's Gloria.
The closest I've ever come to defining a 'standard' of literary beauty is Decorum, and the sense of Decorum (suitableness of whole, part, purpose, internally defined reader, etc) must, it seems to me, be (like capitalism) historical -- they change, and have no ahistorical reality.
My assumptions are of course materialist, as Ted argues. I don't see how a sense of musical or literary decorum can drop from the sky any more than correct ideas can.
Carrol