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Writers and Alcohol
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
Hehe. Yeah, artistic endeavor has been associated with intoxication ever since the Romantic period, the idea being that drunkenness or highness gets you into closer contact with deep feelings or the Muses or whatever, and more willing to shed pretension and social inhibitions.
A funny thing about artists since then is their incessant self-mythologizing. Anyway, I don't think anyone will ever know how much of the inspiration can really be put down to the intoxication and how much of it is just the fact that disturbed individuals happen to have unique perspectives and also happen to take to drinking and drugging.
The self-obsession is the biggest difference between Enlightenment-era art and pretty much everything that came after. Even today the popularly imagined "artistic temperament" is basically a hangover of Romantic ideas. The paradigmatic art form of the Enlightenment was the satire; other-directed, rational, humorous. For the Romantics it was the poem; self-obsessed, emotional, usually serious. For later literary artists it was the novel, often enough a near-roman a clef tale about all the experiences that made our hero the novelist into his bad self.
:toothless
I personally find myself heavily drawn to a Romantic view of the world, so much so in fact that it annoys me. So I make a deliberate effort to give myself frequent doses of the Enlightenment. That might be why I feel "healthy" in some way when I read Nabokov -- he seems like a very neo-classical personality to me. Sometimes I think Goethe was right when he said that the Romantic temperament is essentially a sickly one (and look how many of the Romantics died young). |
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| ownymcown |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
Hehe. Yeah, artistic endeavor has been associated with intoxication ever since the Romantic period, the idea being that drunkenness or highness gets you into closer contact with deep feelings or the Muses or whatever, and more willing to shed pretension and social inhibitions.
A funny thing about artists since then is their incessant self-mythologizing. Anyway, I don't think anyone will ever know how much of the inspiration can really be put down to the intoxication and how much of it is just the fact that disturbed individuals happen to have unique perspectives and also happen to take to drinking and drugging.
The self-obsession is the biggest difference between Enlightenment-era art and pretty much everything that came after. Even today the popularly imagined "artistic temperament" is basically a hangover of Romantic ideas. The paradigmatic art form of the Enlightenment was the satire; other-directed, rational, humorous. For the Romantics it was the poem; self-obsessed, emotional, usually serious. For later literary artists it was the novel, often enough a near-roman a clef tale about all the experiences that made our hero the novelist into his bad self.
:toothless
I personally find myself heavily drawn to a Romantic view of the world, so much so in fact that it annoys me. So I make a deliberate effort to give myself frequent doses of the Enlightenment. That might be why I feel "healthy" in some way when I read Nabokov -- he seems like a very neo-classical personality to me. Sometimes I think Goethe was right when he said that the Romantic temperament is essentially a sickly one (and look how many of the Romantics died young). |
:nervous: |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by ownymcown
:nervous: |
What's so scary about that? |
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| ownymcown |
:wtf: thats better
ps, english major? |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by ownymcown
:wtf: thats better
ps, english major? |
Nah, I just like literature. |
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| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
That might be why I feel "healthy" in some way when I read Nabokov -- he seems like a very neo-classical personality to me. |
he wrote lolita about 700 feet away from where i am sitting now, where he worked in a neo-classical building |
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| enydo |
| quote: | Originally posted by nefardec
he wrote lolita about 700 feet away from where i am sitting now, where he worked in a neo-classical building |
Go lick the spot he wrote it in, go on, I double-dog dare you. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by nefardec
he wrote lolita about 700 feet away from where i am sitting now, where he worked in a neo-classical building |
:happy2: |
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