• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Shakespeare on the Radio"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Dyers and Big Calves"
• Maybe in reply to: Hardy M. Cook: "Age of Awareness"
• Next in thread: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Age of Awareness"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2093  Monday, 29 November 1999.

From:           Reg Grouse <regrouse@netspace.net.au>
Date:           Sunday, 28 Nov 1999 12:11:20 +1000
Subject: 10.2063 Re: Age of Awareness
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.2063 Re: Age of Awareness

Terence Hawkes writes:

>It's precisely the distinction you presuppose between an 'intellectual'
>and an 'emotional response' that strikes me as dangerous as well as
>mistaken.  Language is not music. It has a vital discursive dimension in
>which the intellect is intricately and irrevocably involved.

I cannot imagine how emotional responses could be regarded as dangerous.
If so we are all in danger all of the time, for it is difficult not to
have emotional responses to most experiences particularly experiences of
art.

Language, you claim, is not music. True, but verse speaking is akin to
singing without tonal range. It is this musical quality in Shakespeare's
verse which I believe first attracted me to his works. I cannot see
anything very dangerous in this. I think it was Shakespeare's remarkable
facility with words that gave him the skill to use his genius on so many
different levels. One of these levels was verse.  If you are not moved
by what I would call the beauty of his verse so be it, but do not deny
me the joy of being moved by it.

This is not to deny the value of the intellectual input. All art
combines emotional and intellectual elements in varying proportions and
usually what we call fine art has a higher percentage of the
intellectual. Nevertheless, a work can hardly be defined as art at all
if there is no appeal to the emotions. The very definition of art
demands this.

Reg Grouse

• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Shakespeare on the Radio"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Dyers and Big Calves"
• Maybe in reply to: Hardy M. Cook: "Age of Awareness"
• Next in thread: Hardy M. Cook: "Re: Age of Awareness"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]