For review of the OG's:
There are four main parts to this material in the following order.
Traditionalism against which Romanticism revolted:
1. Puritanism 2. Work Ethic 3. Gender traditionalism
Major points are in gray/black boxes
The Romantic revolt comes under 3 headings:
Authenticity Part One: INTUITION: Discover one's true self
Major points are in green boxes
Authenticity Part Two: EXPRESSIVISM: Express your true self
Major Points are in red boxes
Authenticity Part 3: INTEGRITY Have the integrity to maintain your
true self
Major points are in blue boxes:
authenticity
1. Discover one’s nature
• Listen to the still small voice
• Ignore conventional wisdom
2. Express one’s nature:
•be nonconformist
•Develop one’s inborn abilities
3. Have the integrity to resist coercion
out of one’s authentic life and seduction
back into a conventional life.
expressivism
Once one has discovered one’s
true nature or self, one must
express that self in one’s entire
way of life and work
A note on freedom
The meaning of the word “freedom” has undergone an evolution
in American history.
In the early days of the Republic when Americans said “we are a
Free people” they meant that they were a sovereign nation, no
Longer under the dominion of England. They meant independence
Later the word came to have a primarily domestic usage:
Americans boasted of their freedom meaning that they were
Politically free. They voted, they decided what policies would be.
This became associated with democracy. Americans were
Free because they lived in a democracy
Under the influence of Romanticism “free” came to have a third
Meaning: to be able to live as one wanted, free from the
Requirement to live as others lived, free from the requirement
That they define morality as their communities did.
John Stuart Mill expressed this new sense in his
Classic work “On Liberty”
Protection therefore against the tyranny of the
magistrate is not enough;there needs protection
also against the tyranny of the prevailing
opinion and feeling; against the tendency of
society to impose, by means other than civil
penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules
of conduct on those who dissent from them, to
fetter the development, and if possible, prevent
the formation of, any individuality not in
harmony with its ways, and compel all
characters to fashion themselves upon the
model of its own.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
In On Liberty Mill proposed a rule for the
acceptability of government and social action that
has since become the standard around which
Romantics rally:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted,
individually or collectively, In interfering with the
liberty of action of any of their number, is selfprotection.The only purpose for which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
harm to others.
This means that we cannot coerce or compel anyone
To act a certain way just because we think it is
Morally correct or respectable or normal.
People are free to live as they wish as long as their
Actions don’t directly harm someone else.
They may be unconventional, offensive, eccentric,
Weird, rude, and even immoral in the eyes of others,
But they have a right to be so without interference
From others.
And if people find their behavior unacceptable, they
Are free to try to persuade the weirdos to change
Their ways: but they may not compel them to do so.
Mill continues:
Human liberty requires “liberty of conscience. . . Liberty of
Thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and
Sentiment on all subjects. . .the principle requires
liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan
of our life to suit our own character;
of doing as we like, subject to such consequences
as may follow
Without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as
What we do does not harm them, even though they should
Think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.. .
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way
So long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs,
Or impede their efforts to attain it.
Mill uses a quote from Wilhelm von Humboldt
As the epigram for his book:
The grand leading principle . . .
is the absolute and essential importance of
human development in its richest diversity.
Emerson agrees:
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my
neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work
together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion
over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of
him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to
him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he
cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and
hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot
maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie,
namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder
which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the
world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite
so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between
my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make
somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the
human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too
much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the
absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look
vague and quixotic beside private ones
It is no accident that major social movements in
the last fifty years have been liberation movements,
or that the keyword in these struggles has been
freedom, rather than equality or justice.
Nor is it surprising that the Women’s Movement
felt it necessary to struggle for women’s liberation
even though women had the vote and had (almost)
all the same political freedoms as men.
It was Mill, himself a very proper Victorian English
gentleman, who put forth the idea that a society needed
to encourage eccentrics because, he said,
they are a laboratory for social experimentation.
It is they who try things out that should not be first
tried on a large-scale, things that most of us would
be unwilling or afraid to try. We all benefit, Mill argues,
because we can learn from these experiments, and
then incorporate whatever works and avoid whatever
doesn’t.
Let those hippies experiment with “free love”-if all goes well, perhaps we can loosen the conventional rules about courtship to allow pre-marital sex
and living together before marriage.
Every law, every convention or rule of art that
prevents self-expression or the full enjoyment
of the moment should be shattered and
abolished. Puritanism is the great enemy.
The crusade against puritanism is the only
crusade with which free individuals are justified
In allying themselves
Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989), literary critic
Each man’s, each woman’s,
purpose in life is to express
himself, to realize his full
individuality through creative
work.
--Malcolm Cowley
Sara Wheeler, in Terra Incognita, quotes a man who
drives a very very large ice tractor in Antarctica:
“You see, Sara,”said Gerald, taking off his glasses,
“I can’t paint, or write, or hold a rhythm. I express
myself by making perfect surfaces on ice.”
Contrast 6:
what is the meaning of life?
Romantics: to express one’s true nature
Christians version 1: to get to Heaven, glorify God etc.
Reformers: to make the world a better place
Altruists: to do good for others
Christians version 2: the Social Gospel: to feed the
hungry, clothe the naked as commanded in the Sermon
on the Mount
Jews: to do justice on earth
traditionalists: to fulfill the duties of one’s situation
moralists: to always do what’s right.
Existentialists: to avoid bad faith and live freely
Plato et al.: to find the truth, to live a life of the mind
--this is not an exhaustive list.
Cameo: Dorothy Day
For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road,
accepting the fashions, the education, the religion
of society, he takes the cross of making his own,
and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart,
the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are
the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the
self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual
hostility in which he seems to stand to society,
and especially to educated society. For all this loss
and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in
exercising the highest functions of human nature.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Pathologically resistant to authority
imposed from above, he was intent on
creating ...something using all the means
of expression at his disposal which he
would then personally unify into a piece
of work bearing the unmistakable
imprint of his own personality. It may be
no good, he was often to say of his work,
but at least it’s mine. More than
anything else, more than any idea or
concept, more than any human feeling
or interpretation of experience, this is
what Welles stood for: the insistence
on imprinting his own personality on his
work.
Be Yourself
Believe in yourself for what you are
There is only one judge of your work
and that is yourself; to hell with
those who don’t understand!
--Henry Matisse, 20th century French painter
I say, play your own way. Don’t play wha
the public wants. You play what you wa
and let the public pick up on what you’re
doing-even if it does take them fifteen,
twenty years.
--Thelonious Monk, jazz pianist and composer
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconfor
nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of yo
own mind.
I have my own stern claims . . . If anyone
imagines that this law is lax, let him keep
its commandment one day.
--Emerson
The one thing a man fears next to dea
loss of his good name...the only way h
find respect for himself is by getting o
to say he's a nice fellow. But some me
need the respect of their neighbors, a
aren't afraid to speak the truth.
--Arthur Miller
In every work of genius we recogn
our own rejected thoughts; they come ba
a certain alienated majesty. Great works o
have no more affecting lesson for us than
They teach us to abide by our spontaneou
impression with good-humoured inflexibil
then most when the cry of voices is on the
side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say wit
good sense precisely what we have thoug
all the time, and we shall be forced to take
our opinion from another.
--Emerson
The danger is not that loyalties are divided today
but that they may be undivided tomorrow. . . . I
would urge each individual to avoid total involvement in any organization; to seek to whatever
extent lies within his power to limit each group to
the minimum control necessary for performance
of essential functions; to struggle against the effort
to absorb; to lend his energies to many
organizations and give himself completely to none;
to teach children,in the home and in the school,
"to be laws unto themselves and to depend on
themselves," as Walt Whitman urged us many
years ago--for that is the well source of the
Independent spirit.
--Clark Kerr, creator and chancellor of the UC
system.
NONCONFORMISM:
one must not follow
the conventional
paths in life.
Robert Frost, The Road not Taken
most of Walt Whitman’s "Song of
Myself" has to do not with the self
searching for a final identity but
with the self escaping a series of
identities which threaten to destroy
its lively and various spontaneity
Where the old capitalist had a rock glint, "I'm a crazy old bastard," he would
confide to any reporter, thinking of his ability to water the stock of widows
and head the drive to distribute Christmas packages to the poor, proud of
every paradox in him, as if in the boil of his contradictions were the soups and
nutrients of his strength, so his son was a dull-eyed presence, a servant of
reason-contradictions as odious to him as words of filth before a table of the
immaculate conception.
-Norman Mailer
John D. Rockefeller
Here we see a semi-Romantic view: the old capitalist may have been nasty and
immoral but he was an individual; his son is a nonentity, “dull-eyed,” a “servant of
reason.” (Emerson though would not have agreed that an immoral self was authentic.
Nature is good, he thought. But the idea that it’s better to be a bad oneself than a
good imitation of someone else is persistent in Romantics after Emerson.)
•
Hart, a reader of NR from the start and a on-andoff staffer
since 1969, knew and worked with most of these old
lions of the right; his nostalgic yearning for the days of
irrepressible, unique characters is palpable. (Check out
Hart’s accounts of Kendall’s drunken late-night calls to
Yale’s dean demanding his tenure be bought out, or his
speeding the wrong way down California freeways.) Love
them or hate them, these fellows were originals, not well
suited to building up or following any party line. That’s
one reason you’ll hardly hear about them in the
magazine these days. Over the years National Review
became more and more a GOP salesman, cementing the
Burnham attitude that NR must stand for the most
conservative electable candidate, must always plump for
the possible, must never stand outrageously outside the
status quo.
Even conservatives hunger for individualism
You shall not look through my eyes
either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter
them from your self.
• Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Ordinary work suppresses individuality
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
A classic film on this theme is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times where
Charlie gets caught in the cogs and wheels of industrialization
Traditional family/gender roles suppress individuality
Traditional roles repress sexuality
Traditional roles repress joy and spontaneity
You will lose touch with your intuition;
Your imagination will wither.
To dream magnificently is not a gift given to
all men, and even for those who possess it,
it runs a strong risk of being progressively
diminished by the ever-growing dissipation
of modern life and by the restlessness
engendered by material progress. The ability
to dream is a divine and mysterious ability;
because it is through dreams that man
communicates with the shadowy world which
surrounds him. But this power needs solitude
to develop freely; the more one concentrates,
the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.
--Charles Baudelaire
Success in dealing with the
world as it is inevitably
diminishes the ability to
imagine it as it might be.
--Thomas Carlyle
It reminded me of how children always thought too big;
how the world tackled and chiseled them to keep them safe.
Certainly “safe” is what I am now-or am supposed to be.
Safety is in me, holds me straight, like a spine. My blood
travels no new routes, simply knows its way, lingers, grows
drowsy and fond. Though there are times..in the small city
where we live, when I’ve left my husband for a late walk, the
moon out hanging upside down like some garish, show-offy
bird, like some fantastical mistake-what life of offices and
dull tasks could have a moon in it flooding the sky and streets,
without its seeming preposterous-and in my walks, toward
the silent corners, the cold mulchy smells, the treetops
suddenly waving in the wind, I’ve felt an old wildness again.
Revenant and drunken. It isn’t sexual, not really. It has more
to do with adventure and escape, like a boy’s desire to run away,
revving thwartedly like a wish, twisting in me like a bolt, some
shadow fastened at the feet and gunning for the rest, though,
finally, it has always stayed to one side, as it were some other
impossible life and knew it, like a good dog, good dog. It has
always stayed. --Lorrie Moore, From the Frog Hospital
• You must
shock the
Bourgeois.
(Il faut epater
le bourgeois.)
Charles Baudelaire
(1821-1867),
French poet
The shock of the new
• Lige and I, reflecting a new generation, had--before
1970-- grown our locks, donning those fashionable
breeches of the time, bell bottoms. No longer did I
have what Whitman called "the blanched, shaved
face of an orthodox citizen." Lige's long hair, a feared
symbol to conservatives who worried about too much
likening of males and females, fell in sunny
blondness over his shoulders. As he walked proudly
past straight-identified hard-hats mending Manhattan
streets, I noted with satisfaction that many would
cruise him, thinking, it appeared, the unthinkable.
– Jack Nichols, gay liberation pioneer
Turn of the century lesbians
Acting like men and (at left)
Dressing like them.
An early 20th century
painting advocating
the shocking idea that
women artists should
get to study from
live nude models too.
She shocked America by getting a sex-change operation
Brigitte Bardot, on the right, was shocking and
disreputable to the American middle-class because
she was openly sexual and not in the least demure.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
The sexuality of some women
Was so shocking that they were
Invisible.
Interracial sex was definitely not okay--it’s “tabu.”
“During the 50’s “92% [of Americans] in the north and
99% in the south approved of laws banning marriage
Between whites and non-whites. As late as the midSixties, more than half of northern whites and over
3/4 of southern whites still opposed interracial
Marriage.”
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound
The attempts in the 50’s to
publish Lady Chatterley’s
Lover and Ulysses led to
legal prosecution and
law suits which eventually
allowed for greater freedom
to publish erotic material.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The high value put on emotion
The serendipitous, unplannable, nature of experience
Openness to experience of whatever sort
Living for the moment, for “brief hours”
What got Ulysses into trouble was the ending where Molly Bloom is lying in bed thinking
about her husband, her sexual experiences, bodily functions. . .
"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian
girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and
I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again
yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my
arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume
yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "
It is out of this passage, it seems to me now - like a down-to-earth goddess out of ocean
weather - that Molly Bloom arises. From here on, the woman of fractions comes together:
with her plump arms, her wild dreams, her underwear thrown around her bedroom, her
dead baby son, her downright sexuality and wilful fantasies, Molly breaks the mould. The
milkwoman, who is a sign for the frozen symbolism of national Ireland, reminds Stephen
of the lowly form of an immortal. Joyce reverses the sign. He makes Molly the immortal
form of lowliness. She is fearless, profane, disrespectful of known authorities. As such,
she marks an extraordinary liberation from the rigid diagrams of womanhood Joyce
sensed in his own culture. She also signposts his own freedom from the expectations
which might be imposed on a national writer. . . Molly Bloom . . .is at the centre of
Ulysses and she has lived into the future. Not her own future, of course, because her
soliloquy in no sense promises that. On the contrary, there is something bleak and heartstopping at times in her memories and acceptances. But, in the wider sense, she has
lived into the future of the country and the city she comes from. Molly Bloom's soliloquy
is now part of the consciousness of a country which once could no more have
accommodated her than it could have tolerated her restless creator. As the mark of
his freedom she is an important figure. As the sign of ours, she is a beloved one.
–--Eavan Boland,Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in Humanities at Stanford
“My two-year
old can paint
better than
that.”
A commonlyheard reaction
to a painting
style one
didn’t understand.
Elvis the Pelvis was not allowed to be shown
below the waist when he appeared
on Ed Sullivan’s TV show. His “gyrations”
were thought to be too sexually suggestive
for middle class teenagers to see.
If mom & dad drink, I’ll shock them by doing my own drugs. But time passes, cultures adjust
And before you know it. . .
Suburban mom becomes
neighborhood pot dealer?
Notice which side
The City Council is
On now
Will she be the world’s most
popular soccer mom or what?
“Can Mrs. Botwin bring the snacks again, please?”
In 1948 Norman Mailer published the novel that made
him famous: The Naked and the Dead . It was a
realistic work depicting soldiers in World War II.
Mailer wished to show them using the kind of language
Tthat soldiers in fact used. He said that he couldn’t
possibly have a soldier respond to the violent death
of his buddy with “Oh fiddlesticks!” So he used the
word “fuck” where soldiers would have used it, but
his publishers forced Mailer to use the euphemism "fug"
in lieu of "fuck". Mailer's version of a subsequent incident
follows:
". . . The word has been a source of great embarrassment to me over the years
because, you know, Talullah Bankhead's press agent, many years ago, got a story in
the papers which went..."Oh, hello, you're Norman Mailer," said Talullah Bankhead
allegedly, "You're the young man that doesn't know how to spell..." You know, the
four-letter word was indicated with all sorts of asterisks... I thought she [Bankhead]
should have hired a publicity man who had a better sense of fair play."
Twenty years later, there appeared this
notorious group:
In the late 60’s, comedian George
Carlin got in some serious trouble with
a routine called “Seven Words You
Can’t Use on Television.” Pacifica
Radio was not allowed to let him use
this bit over the air which led to a
landmark lawsuit over what was
acceptable on the public airwaves.
See next slide for a sample:
There are some people who would have you not use certain
words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language,
and there are seven of them that you can't say on television.
What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad.
They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group
that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words.
That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad
word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad
Intentions.
And words, you know the seven don't you?
Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits,
Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect
your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning
the war. . . There are some two-way words. There are doublemeaning words [like] prick. It's okay if it happens to your finger.
Yes, you can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick. No, no."
By now, things have loosened a bit:
On an episode of South Park called
“Raisins,” Comedy Central’s Standards and Practices dept.
allowed the use of the word “cunt” (in a way) over the air,
because Stan asked Jimmy, who has a speech problem to
tell Wendy she is the continuing source of his inspiration.
Jimmy: “Hey W-W-Wendy, S-Stan says tha-that
You’re a c- a cu- a cunt-a cun”
Wendy, “Well, tell Stan to fuck off!”
Jimmy: “A continuing s-s-source of in-inspiration
Standards and Practices apparently had no problem with
the word “fuck.”
Allen Ginsberg & Neil Cassady: Beat Icons
English Teddy Boys from the early 60’s
They scandalized adults with their “long” hair.
Seriously.
But, in a few years. . .
Four years later
The female version of the
Beatles looked like this.
The female counterculture version
For after having observed thousands of Oxford students, and
seeing certain fashion mistakes being made repeatedly, I have
come to the conclusion that there is one general course Oxford
should require all of its students to take: Fashion Etiquette 101.
But, alas, this course is not available to students – not even as
an elective. Hence, I have taken it upon myself to draw your
attention to certain ‘don'ts' of which you may inadvertently be
falling foul via a brief instruction.
Our first lesson is a numerical study in the ratio of skin to
clothes. Micro-mini skirts, low-cut tops, backless dresses –
all of these items can look good, but not if worn simultaneously.
Your amazing legs will not be as noticeable in a miniskirt if the
rest of your body is naked as well. The trick is to show off just
one strategic part of your body. Suggestiveness is much sexier
than being completely naked – don't ruin the mystery by baring
it all too soon.
--advice from a coed in 2005
Well, you walk into the room
like a camel and then you
frown;
You put your eyes in
your pocket and your nose on
the ground-- There ought to be
a law against you comin' around
You should be made to wear
earphones because something
is happening here but you don't
know what it is,
Do you, Mister Jones?
--Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man” 1965
1967: The Human Be-In
To freak out was
to lose it, to
go temporarily
nuts, to have
hysterics.
Parents were
always
freaking out over
their kids’ hair
and dress and music,
drug use and
sexual behavior.
“Freak” was also one
of the preferred terms
for someone who
was part of the
Counterculture,
a “hippie.”
A freak would call
himself a freak, but
would never refer
to himself as a
Hippie.
Wedding in New Buffalo
“We’re all born naked,
Honey--after that,
It’s all drag.”
--RuPaul, famous
Drag queen
"If they hate you in drag, they're probably going to hate you out of drag too you're the same person both ways, except when you're in a dress you have
more attitude,” ---Queen Kaluha Ice, drag queen
Robert Mapplethorpe
Broke taboos
On photographing
The nude male
Body as a sexual
Object as well
As by depicting
Interracial gay
Couples.
Guess who?
“White gauze”
Is it too
obvious to
see this as
a metaphor
for the
creative
soul being
smothered
by
conformity?
In 1989 Andres Serrano caused a
huge uproar over this work called
“Piss Christ,” which was a photo
of a crucifix submerged in a jar of
the artist’s urine. Detractors accused
Serrano of blasphemy and others
defended it on grounds of artistic
freedom. On the floor of the United
States Senate, Senators Al D'Amato
and Jesse Helms expressed outrage
that the piece was supported by the
National Endowment for the Arts,
since it is a federal taxpayer-financed
institution.
Surprisingly, the art critic and Catholic
Nun Sister Wendy Beckett voiced her
approval of Piss Christ whose public
exhibition offended all conservative,
most moderate and even some liberal
Catholics.
Self-development
The most important thing in life is
to develop the talents Nature gave you
Being different just to shock is not what Romantics
advocate: but one must be willing to shock if that is
what it takes to become who you really are, to fully
develop one’s talents.
REJECT the TYRANNY of the
FUTURE
Don’t postpone living now for the sake of
some future goal.
“Seize the day”
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
Don’t be cautious; live in the moment.
Pleasantville:
Bill says to Bud, referring to the fact that the
one thing he really enjoys is painting the
Christmas scenes on the Malt Shop windows:
Why should I have to wait all year long for
one moment that I really enjoy? What’s the point of that?
Bud: So people can get their hamburgers!
The work ethic requires deferred (or possibly no)
gratification.
"the emancipation of the present tense, which
now informs every new product or advertisement,
is a deceptively radical force. It undermines the
authority of work, school, church and family, which
all demand that we subordinate the present to the future."
Edna St. Vincent Millay: First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light. . .
In 1915, The Dean of Women at the University
Of Wisconsin lamented
“the tidal wave of irresponsible joyousness”
that had apparently swept over the campus.
Here is the Puritan Ethic speaking:
If one is to have joy, it must be responsible joy.
For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind.
For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit.
This produces the very queer world we live in, a
world in continuous creation and therefore
continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually
new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full
of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting
conflict between the new idea and the old
allegiances, new arts and new inventions
against the old establishment.
» Joyce Cary (1888-1957), British author.
“It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the
martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get
drunk without stopping! On wine, on
poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”
Charles Baudelaire (1821ﾐ1867),
Or maybe on sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll
Do not consider present time as clock
tme, but rather as a timeless moment
when all aremutually engaged in
experiencing an experience,
the
outcome of which is yet unknown.
You're right there. You're connected and
you don't know what's going to happen
and that's where the excitement is and
that's where the spontaneity is and
that's where the vitality is and that's
where the joy is
--Viola Spolin, the “mother of Improvisational Theatre”
• It is stupid to pile up treasures that we
can enjoy only in old age, when we
have lost the capacity or enjoyment.
Better to seize the moment as it comes,
to dwell in it intensely, even at the cost
of future suffering.
» Malcolm Cowley
Contrast 7:
Live for today or live for
tomorrow?
• Romantics: live for today
• Puritans: live for tomorrow (salvation)
• Ben Franklin: live for tomorrow (worldly
success
Live life to the full
Be open
Be sensual
Be unafraid
“Seize the day”
"I only regret, in my chilled old age, certain
occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace."
--Henry James to Hugh Walpole
• Of all the emotions celebrated by the Romantics, the most
popular was love. Although the great Romantic works often
center on terror or rage, the motive force behind these passions
is most often a relationship between a pair of lovers. In the
classical world love had been more or less identical with sex,
the Romans treating it in a particularly cynical manner. The
Medieval troubadours had celebrated courtly adultery according
to a highly artificial code that little reflected the lives of real men
and women while agreeing with physicians that romantic
passion was a potentially fatal disease. It was the romantics
who first celebrated romantic love as the natural birthright of
every human being, the most exalted of human sentiments, and
the necessary foundation of a successful marriage.
• The transcendent, irrational, self-destructive passion
of a Romeo and Juliet came to be considered the
birthright of every European and American citizen;
but this conviction which continues to shape much of
our thinking about relationships, marriage, and the
family found its mature form during the Romantic
age. So thoroughly has love become identified with
romance that the two are now generally taken as
synonyms, disregarding the earlier associations of
"romance" with adventure, terror, and mysticism.
• It is stupid to pile up treasures that we
can enjoy only in old age, when we
have lost the capacity or enjoyment.
Better to seize the moment as it comes,
to dwell in it intensely, even at the cost
of future suffering.
» Malcolm Cowley
Although artistic revolt, radical
politics and the need to escape from
Philistine America accurately
characterized the Village
leadership, the prime element
attracting many to the Village was
more mundane...the Village offered
a new sexual freedom to those who
lived there. Just as in the youth
revolt of the 1960’s, sexual
experimentation was as vital a
component of intellectual and
social release as was a new political
consciousness. . . Much of polite
scholarship has also obscured the
Fact that it was the woman feminist
residents of the village who pioneered
and led this sexual rebellion.. . .we
should remember that it took more
courage, in the teens [and for a woman]
to advocate free love than it took to
preach social revolution.
Mary Heaton Vorse
Contrast 8:
live life to the full or not?
Romantics: Live life to the full
Puritans: Repress your nature, for much of it is evil
Freud: Some repression of sexual instincts is necessary
for people to live in society. A society in which everyone
sought pleasure at all times would be impossible. This
means that civilized people can never be truly happy.
REJECT the WORK ETHIC
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, encouraging his
followers not to worry about their worldly needs:
“Why take ye thought for raiment? Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these.”
art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily
above necessity and neediness; for art is the
daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions
and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits
and not by that of matter. But in our day it is
necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a
degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the
great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage
and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance
of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight,
and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from
the noisy Vanity Fair of our time.
In data collected [by Alfred Kinsey in the 50’s]
we find that both men and women widely believed
that “providing sexual pleasure for one’s spouse
Is a central requirement for a happy marriage.
According to marriage manuals, sexual technique
Was an important thing to acquire, something
Akin to a sex as work ethic.”
Nothing could be farther from Romanticism than to
make a duty out of sex.
--Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound, p. 117
"I never wrote for money. . . ," she says. "I've
always written for the joy of it. . .
Diane di Prima
art was still looked upon by mother and fat
aunt and uncle, the grocer-the Common M
as a way of escaping the reasonableness
working for a living. What stuck in the Com
Craw was the passion of art, its thrills and
of the imagination.
Larry Rivers, avant-garde painter and musician
Thoreau claimed that there was no
time when he was at Walden Pond.
His days at Walden are such that he
can sit rapt in a revery, amidst the pines...
in undisturbed solitude and stillness...
his time there is not segmented into
hours and fretted by the ticking of a
clock. he said that he grew like corn
by sitting on his doorstep from dawn
to noon, too busy to engage in work of
head or hand
• And this natural unclocked time is not
"idleness" in the sense that the men of the
village, the Ben Franklins would understand
it, and condemn it for being so. It is rather the
best possible use of time. It's one's own time,
unsold to anyone else, undevoted to the
chores of the world, it's a sacred chunk of
one's life, which is nothing but time, so one
better be careful how one spends it.
– Thoreau, walden
[Matisse} simply refused to get a job,
or to be anything but a painter. The
once or twice he considered it, when
things were truly desperate, his wife
Dissuaded him:she believed he was a
painter too. He never got a day job, he
never did what “practical” people
would do, paint in his spare time.
Contrast 9
•Make sure your kids have plenty of enriching things
to do during the summer: violin lessons, camp, summer
school. Fill up their time so they don’t waste it. If you don’t,
they’ll fall behind in the race to get to Harvard.
•Let your kids loaf and lie under trees during the summer.
Let them be children.
REJECT ELITISM
be a democrat
1. We all have a Natural genius, we are all worthwhile.
No one exists simply to serve someone else.
2. One’s worth is inborn: it is not measured by one’s
social status or wealth or race or gender.
3. Insist that your life matters and is not to be
lightly thrown away or wasted.
Do you know so much that you call
the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight,
and he or she has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together
From its diffuse float, and the soils on the
Surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts
For you only and not for him and her?
--Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”
"Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking,
and breeding
No sentimentalist, no stander above men
and women or apart from them”
one aspect of Romanticism:
the belief that products of the uncultivated popular
imagination could equal or even surpass those of the
educated court poets and composers who had
previously monopolized the attentions of scholars
and connoisseurs.
Whereas during much of the 17th and 18th centuries
learned allusions, complexity and grandiosity were
prized, the new romantic taste favored simplicity and
naturalness; and these were thought to flow most
clearly and abundantly from the "spontaneous"
outpourings of the untutored common people.
Contrast 10
• Romantics: we are all equally unique and
valuable individuals.
• Puritans: some of us are the Elect and will go
to Heaven; some are not.
• Franklin: some of us can be successful; some
are lazy and can’t
• Rand: some few individuals are Geniuses
• Racists: white people are superior to people
of color
• Sexists: men are superior to women
• “Patriots”: people of my country are superior
to people of your country.