[lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope

[Chris Doss]

The idea just occurred to me that the notion that bad people (or people with bad ideas -- not the same thing) can't create works of beauty is tied up with the idea that Beauty is a variant of Truth. A work in this view can only be beautiful if it is true (in an objective, not phenomenological, sense); therefore, works by bad people (or people with bad ideas) must not really be beautiful, because if they were, that would mean that the ideas behind them have some substance as well. So, if we admit that Triumph of the Will is beautiful, that must mean that Nazism must be true. Nazism isn't true, therefore Triumph of the Will must not really be beautiful after all.

--- On Wed, 1/14/09, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:


> From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 6:18 PM
> Wasn't the question _quality_, not influence. 
> 
> Pound, Eliot, Yeats, fascists or reactionaries, all great
> poets. Philip Larkin, right wing racist jerk, same. Kipling,
> great storyteller. Balzac, great novelist. One of Marx's
> unfinished projects was a literary study of Balzac. Conrad
> (monarchist reactionary, Carlist gunrunner), great master of
> the English language. Celine (Nazi collaborator), great
> writer. Daughter watched Birth of a Nation with me,
> fascinated horror. She said, I know I could never admit this
> outside the house, but this is one of the greatest movies
> I've ever seen. Riefenstahl, pure Nazi propaganda and
> high cinematic art. Etc. And one can add: Heidegger, Nazi,
> great philosopher; Schmitt, Nazi ideologue, great political
> thinker. 
> 
> On the flip side there are mountain ranges full of of PC
> dreck. I will take one page of Balzac or Conrad
> tforeverything that Mike Gold every wrote, and he wasn't
> the worst by far.
> 
> 
> --- On Wed, 1/14/09, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life:
> Was Fuck Hope
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 4:40 PM
> > On Jan 14, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
> > 
> > > Somebody's politics are completely irrelevant
> to
> > the quality of their artistic output, as is their
> personal
> > morality. It's a tekhne, a craft. Might as well
> refuse
> > to admire desks made by right-wing carpenters.
> > 
> > Well I dunno about that. Works of art are filled with
> > politics - you can't miss it in Stevens or Pound
> (or
> > Eliot or...).
> > 
> > Doug
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> 
> 
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