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From: rteeter@netcom.com (Robert Teeter)
Subject: Re: Quantifying literary progress
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 05:57:12 GMT
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Alastair Ward (award@eildon.win-uk.net) wrote:

: I cannot help but feel that Jorn's comment applies to all of the arts.
: Especially perhaps to music. It seems astonishing to me that we are so
: emotionally susceptible to music. One could, I think, map out large parts of a
: persons emotional structure by playing different pieces of music and noting the
: responses. 

	One the one hand, the arts (such as music) create such individual
responses in people that we could use works of art to identify the
individual person's emotional structure.  So, each person's emotional
structure would respond differently to a given work of art, right?
	But, on the other hand:

: And again, just as for the poet, there are really quite strict rules involved
: and the listener will quickly respond to any lack of integrity in the
: composition.  Just as a scientist will respond to a lack of rigour in a proof.

	[deletia]

: I also share Jorn's basic point that modern literature (and I would say Art in
: general) is far more highly developed than that of the ancient world. As
: Science has evolved and developed so too has Art and these two great areas of
: our lives should not be regarded as separate but instead as closely connected
: and subject to very similar disciplines.

	According to these two paragraphs, there are strict rules about
art, so much so that one might compare said rules to the *laws* discovered
by science.  For example, *the* (any) listener will catch a "lack of
integrity" in a musical composition.  So, by this argument, everyone
should respond the same way to a given work of art, just as we all
resond the same way to the force of gravity.
	Which is it?  And were the ancients just plain wrong to enjoy
what we superior moderns can see was substandard art?



-- 
	Robert Teeter
	rteeter@netcom.com

