Venturing Into the Uncharted World of Aesthetics [1 ed.] 1527592812, 9781527592810

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Venturing into the Uncharted World of Aesthetics

Venturing into the Uncharted World of Aesthetics Edited by

John Murungi and Linda Ardito

Venturing into the Uncharted World of Aesthetics Edited by John Murungi and Linda Ardito This book first published 2023 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2023 by John Murungi, Linda Ardito and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-9281-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-9281-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contributors ............................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. x Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 The Same Taste Alphonso Lingis Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 6 Following the Uncharted Way: Aesthetic Journeys on Land, Sea, and Within Kip Redick Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45 The Therapeutic Value of Aesthetic Experience Donald Kuspit Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 52 Beautifying Friendship John Murungi Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 68 The Uncharted World of AI Art: Music and AI Bongrae Seok Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 88 A Phenomenological Meditation Inside Plath’s “The Moon and the Yew Tree” Ellen Miller Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 112 Cosmologies and Body Politics in Imaging Performances from the Americas Monica Silva Toledo

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Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 128 Nature’s Aesthetic Language and its Interpretation in the Photographic Image Linda Ardito

CONTRIBUTORS Alphonso Lingis, Ph.D, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. Among his books published are The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, Abuses, The Imperative, Dangerous Emotions, Trust, The First Person Singular, Contact, Violence and Splendor, Irrevocable, and The Alphonso Lingis Reader. Kip Redick, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Christopher Newport University. Professional interests include pilgrimage studies, spiritual journey, spirituality of place, aesthetics, and film studies. His specific research interest centers on the study of wilderness trails as sites of spiritual journey. Among his publications are: “Interpreting Contemporary Pilgrimage as Spiritual Journey or Aesthetic Tourism Along the Appalachian Trail.” “Aesthetic Sojourning on the Appalachian Trail”, “Sensuous Encounter where Journey and Festival Meet: a Phenomenology of Pilgrimage.”, “Spiritual Rambling: Long Distance Wilderness Sojourning as Meaning-Making.” “Profane Experience and Sacred Encounter: Journeys to Disney and the Camino De Santiago.” “Wilderness as Axis Mundi: Spiritual Journeys on the Appalachian Trail.” Donald Kuspit, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History and Philosophy at Stony Brook University and a former A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University. He has published twenty books, some 1500 articles, catalogue essays, exhibition and book reviews. He has five honorary doctorates, received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism from the College Art Association, a Citation for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts from the National Association of the Schools of Art and Design, and the Tenth Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. He has delivered the Getty Lectures at the University of Southern California and been the Robertson Fellow at the University Glasgow. He has curated

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many exhibitions, received many fellowships, and has been editorial advisor for European Art 1900-1950 for the Encyclopedia. John Murungi, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Towson University, Maryland USA. His publications include: African Philosophical Currents, African Philosophical Illuminations, African Musical Aesthetics. His coedited books with Linda Ardito include Home-Lived Experiences, Trajectories, Elemental Sensuous, Rendezvous with the Sensuous. His coedited books with Gary Backhaus include Symbolic Landscapes, Colonial and Global Interfacings: Imperial Hegemonies and Democratizing Resistances. His research is in Aesthetics, African Philosophy, Legal Philosophy, and Twentieth Century Philosophy. He is the Co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place. Bongrae Seok, Ph.D, is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. He received his Ph. D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona. His primary research interests lie in cognitive and comparative Asian philosophy and moral psychology, philosophy of neuroscience and AI, moral neuroscience, neuroethics and neuroasesthetics. His recent books include: Naturalization, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy: Owen Flanagan and Beyond, oral Psychology of Confucian Shame: Shame of Shamelessness (2016), and Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy. Ellen Miller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. Her book, Releasing Philosophy, Thinking Art: A Phenomenological Study of Sylvia Plath’s Poetry (Davies Group Publishers), is the first full-length philosophical examination of Plath’s poetry. She has published several articles on philosophical issues in Plath’s work. Her other publications and scholarly presentations focus on topics in ethics, philosophy of art, feminist philosophies, and philosophy of education. She has received grants for her pre-college philosophy outreach work.

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Monica Toledo Silva is a semiotician, audiovisual artist and researcher of body images and performative languages. She is an Independent professor at PUC Minas; editor of the books Performances of Memory and Dramaturgies of Reality by the publishing label Bloop. She runs the Swimming Seas Net, dedicated to the migrant art through knowledge creation (artists talks, collective curatorship and exhibitions around the themes of the refuge, displacement and territoriality worldwide. She has held three post-doctor fellowships (UFMG/ Communications 2013, UNICAMP/ Multimedia 2015 and USP/ Letters 2022). She also has published essays and has participated in conferences and video series and installations. Linda Ardito, Ph.D., researches and writes extensively on subjects in the arts and humanities after a long and distinguished career in New York as Professor of Music. She has co-edited with John Murungi and authored book chapters in Home – Lived Experiences–Philosophical Reflections; The Poetry in Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Christos C. Evangeliou; Sensorial Trajectories; Elemental Sensuous: Phenomenology and Aesthetics; and Rendezvous with the Sensuous: Readings on Aesthetics. She has also authored chapters in Creativity: Fostering, Measuring and Contexts; and Symbolic Landscapes; and entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians; The Grove Dictionary of American Music; and the Encyclopedia of Education and Human Development; as well as journal articles in Skepsis; International Journal of Musicology; and Perspectives of New Music, among others.

INTRODUCTION The uncharted world of aesthetics is an essential consideration with respect to the broader appreciation of the world of aesthetics. To consider the world of aesthetics is also to take this component into account. Thus, attempts at charting this uncharted world remain a permanent feature of the world of aesthetics. Of course, this uncharted world can never be fully charted. Moreover, the world of aesthetics is, itself, inextricable from the world as a whole. Indeed, it is an essential feature of this larger world, and an invaluable key to its appreciation. Consequently, to venture into the uncharted world of aesthetics is to also venture into this larger world. This larger world might be referred to as the “cosmos” or the “universe.” In the didactic, Latin poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BCE – c. 55 BCE) reflects upon the nature of the universe: I am blazing a trail through pathless tracts of the Muses’ Pierian realm, where no foot has ever trod before. What joy it is to light upon virgin springs and drink their waters. What joy to pluck fresh flowers and gather for my brow a glorious garland from fields whose blossoms were never yet wreathed by Muses round any head. 1

The nature of the universe may be perceived and experienced as the universe of nature. Nature’s universe or the universe of nature is precisely where the world of aesthetics resides. Thus what Lucretius says in his poem is relevant to what is said about the world of aesthetics. Nature gives birth to language and language gives birth to nature. Nature and language are coeval—here connoting that they have the same theoretical date of origin. In a sense, we may say that they cohabitate as a way of their being. The editors and authors of the present book may be regarded as heirs or descendants of this cohabitation. Aesthetics, it may be said, is a child of the creative processes that would be associated with this coeval union. Every contribution in this book makes use of language, for it is in this that its expression is made manifest. In some way, the use of language is an

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extraordinary feat that only attains the intended objective by itself bearing the attributes of aesthetics. Indeed, language is, itself, extraordinary in that it is not merely an instrument of communication. As Heidegger puts it: … words and language are not wrappings in which things are packed for commerce of those who write and speak. It is in words and in language that things first come into being and are. For this reason, the misuse of language in idle talk, in slogans, and phrases, destroy or authentic relation to things. 2

When language bears the attributes of aesthetics, which it must do if its subject matter is aesthetics, it must be perceived and understood aesthetically. It gives birth to itself and comes into relief as an aesthetic phenomenon. Indeed, it gives birth to itself as aesthetics, and it is only in this sense that it can enter into relationship with the aesthetic phenomena to which it gives birth. We may say that it has an uncharted element, and that it speaks silently. Moreover, we may say that it is permanently pregnant with silence. Indeed, this is what is uncharted about it. It does not merely transmit ideas. In it and by it, the world of aesthetics and the world to which the world of aesthetics belongs are brought to bear on each other in an essential way. Thus, unchartedness belongs to both. When this book is read from an aesthetic perspective, each author and their respective contributions, are, in a sense, blazing a trail, a trail through the uncharted world of aesthetics and the uncharted world that is called the “universe.” Ultimately, their respective contributions will leave the world of aesthetics yet uncharted, and, thus, their work should be read and understood in this context. This would apply to not only the content of each contribution but also to the language in which it is expressed. Speaking or writing about the aesthetic world calls for an aesthetic language. This language itself is the flesh of aesthetics, and it shares the features of the aesthetic world. In it, there is what is and what remains uncharted. This book is intended as an invitation, not only for those who have already embarked upon the activity of venturing into the uncharted world of aesthetics, but also for those who wish to join in this activity, including those for whom such venturing is unfamiliar. Strictly speaking, it is not the

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editors who extend this invitation. It is extended primarily by the uncharted world of aesthetics itself. One could say that the chapters contained herein constitute responses to this invitation. It will be important for the reader to bear in mind that each author, by his/her contribution to this book, makes an inescapably singular response. While there is a place for singular venturing in the uncharted world of aesthetics, such venturing would presuppose that each author is open to what is presented by the other authors of the present book. Such openness necessarily belongs to the aesthetic world in both its charted and uncharted expressions. One does not have to disavow his or her singularity to contribute to and be a part of this broader world of aesthetics. Indeed, to be open in this way would not be contradictory. It is instead part of the enigma of the uncharted world of aesthetics, and it would be understood as an opening to venturing. This is how it would be understood: as opening itself to venturing. Singularities are singularities of this world. Each is claimed by the world as its own. Each door opens to others. Notwithstanding any and all instances of venturing into the uncharted world of aesthetics, the unchartedness of this world remains forever what it is: uncharted. As such, venturing into it is an endless endeavor. Indeed, such venturing will never render this world fully charted. So, what inspires the venturer? It is the experiential component of venturing that inspires the venturer. The condition of unchartedness inspires those who venture into it. It mirrors the venturer, and the venturer mirrors it. The reciprocity of this mirroring is such that without the one the other would not exist. The uncharted world is such that it constitutes and reveals the venturer as uncharted. In venturing into this world, one ventures into oneself and experiences oneself as unchartered. A precondition of successful venturing into the uncharted world of aesthetics is an appreciation for the requisite divestiture from fixation on/in the charted world of aesthetics. To subscribe to this precondition is to free oneself from this fixation, and, in so doing, to, in a sense, free oneself from self. This divestiture is occasioned by the uncharted world of aesthetics. Rendering oneself ready for this occasion is analogous to what phenomenologists refer to as epoché. One must wean oneself of prejudices or, at least, suspend one’s pre-conceptions. This epoché is

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accomplished by adhering to the requisite approach to the uncharted world of aesthetics. As has been mentioned, the present authors and their respective contributions are, in a sense, blazing a trail through the uncharted world of aesthetics and the uncharted world that is called the “universe.” In so doing, they are also blazing a trail to self. These trails are paradoxical. They end where they begin and begin where they end. The beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning. The uncharted world of aesthetics is the uncharted world of self. What this world says about self is that self is what it is by being uncharted and by remaining so even as it charts itself. Self is expressed as both a singularity and a state of openness to other singularities. One affirms and experiences oneself aesthetically and, in this sense, would remain as such. It is precisely in this sense that one has to perceive and conceive each author and their contribution to the present book. Its perception and conception necessitates that the perceiver and the conceiver be similarly situated. One cannot read what is said about aesthetics without reading it aesthetically and, in a sense, without one being an aesthetician. As said earlier, the uncharted world of aesthetics opens to the larger uncharted world. In its aesthetic context, self is truly self in the context of this larger world. It is what it is by being inseparable from nature and from the universe. Self is self in and of nature and in and of the larger world. Self is in the universe and of it. It is in the cosmos and of it. Thus, self is as much revealed in the world of aesthetics as it is in the larger world. When self is not aesthetically understood or affirmed and is experienced in this sense as referenced above, it loses contact with itself. Such loss would constitute impairment to the self. To eliminate such loss would be to subscribe to that which is therapeutic. An aesthetic pursuit is a pursuit for the wellbeing of self. Nature, the universe, and the cosmos are as diagnostic clinics within which are held remedies for the impaired self. Understood aesthetically, such remedies are what they are. In part, they remain uncharted, perennially out of hand. Recognizing this is therapeutic for those who are and remain under the sway of aesthetics. For those who are not under such a sway, it would not be an overstatement to say that lacking this recognition could be catastrophic in ways not necessarily

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understood. Life remains uncharted in spite of its chartedness. The charted and the uncharted remain as dynamic yet permanent features of life. Whether charted or uncharted, the world of aesthetics is a lived-world, a world that is perhaps more narrowly referred to as the world of fine arts. The editors hope that readers will be inspired by what they read and respond creatively to their experience of the uncharted sense of who and what they are. We also hope that readers will gain a greater appreciation for how works either on or about aesthetics are also works that reflect who and what they/we are. Such works are pregnant with endless possibilities of being, possibilities that are essential features of the uncharted nature of aesthetics.

Notes 1

Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, translated by Ronald Latham (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Classics), 1962, 130. 2 Heidegger, Martin, Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1959, p. 13-14.

CHAPTER ONE THE SAME TASTE ALFONSO LINGIS

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Chapter One

Humans vary in what body types, clothing and furniture they find beautiful. An individual varies; a painting I found beautiful may later strike me as shallow and trivial and unattractive. There are a few things that people in one culture find beautiful but people in another find ugly— the monumental buildings built by the fascist regime in Spain, or the bound feet of Chinese court women. Some philosophers and sometimes we in our conversations take taste to be subjective and idiosyncratic. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. De gustibus non est disputandum. Yet art historians and critics and philosopher Immanuel Kant speak of beauty that anyone with eyes and ears and experience can recognize. So often, before a sunset, a building, a dancer, we act as though we think, it’s not just me, that just is beautiful. What is more, there is a sense of the beautiful that we share not just with anyone in the human species but also with other species. Humpback, blue, fin, minke, and bowhead whales sing. More whale species may sing; research is still inadequate. Male whales sing during the breeding season but also during their long migrations. The loud songs of blue whales can travel the ocean a thousand kilometers. The humpback's songs have a hierarchical syntax. Phrases made of sets of sounds are repeated in patterns forming themes. Songs comprise two to nine themes sung in a specific order. “These sounds are, with no exception that I can think of, the most evocative, most beautiful sounds made by any animal on Earth," researcher Roger Payne wrote. People agree; the greatest single pressing of any album of recorded music was of the 1979 album Songs of the Humpback Whale. Of the approximately ten thousand species of birds, about half are songbirds. Songbirds are believed to have originated in Australia some 24 million years ago. Nightingales, canaries, Asian koels, rose-breasted grosbeaks, American robins, song thrushes, channel-billed cuckoos, and house sparrows sing richly varied songs. Sedge warblers sing very long and complex songs. Superb lyrebirds sing hundreds of songs and mimic hundreds of songs of other species and random sounds of the environment. In North America the songs of wood thrushes use the Western diatonic scale; canyon wrens use the more complex chromatic scale and hermit

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thrushes sing with the pentatonic scale of traditional Asian music. Musician wrens of the Amazon forest sing in perfect consonances, which are used in many folk and children’s songs. The songs [of humpback whales] have musical structure. They are comprised of four to ten themes sung in the same order, and each theme is a unique set of musical note sequences—phrases and subphrases. Of vast significance for understanding musical intelligence is that, when played at high speed, whale songs are indistinguishable from bird songs; at an intermediate speed, they can be mistaken for possible human compositions. Apparently, birds, humans, and whales possess a basic musical intelligence since they can listen to, appreciate, create, and sing intricate and beautiful music that is executed by each taxon at a different tempo. —Theodore X. Barber1

Whales in the oceans, birds in the skies, and humans have the same taste in melodies. Flowers are made to attract the eyes of pollinators; the patterns and colors, the beauty of flowers delight our eyes. The intense and iridescent colors and rhythmic patterns, the beauty of feathers exceeds that of flowers. The oldest feathers discovered were on ornithischian dinosaurs from the Triassic age, 250 million years ago. Recent research has revealed feathers colored, patterned, and iridescent; Anchiornis in black, white, grey, and red; Sinosauropteryx in orange and black stripes; Microraptor in iridescent black. Colors and patterns that are attractive. Feathers first evolved not for flight but for display. Malayasian great argus pheasants are found in forests of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and Sumatra. Their heads and necks are blue, with black crests, their upper breasts rufous red. Their legs are red. The males have decorative wing feathers up to three feet long, and tail feathers up to four and a half feet in length. On the wing feathers are sixteen ocelli; they are three-dimensional, raw umber shading into taupe in depth, with highlights like gleams of light: marbles in sockets. “These feathers have been shown to several artists, and all have expressed their admiration at the perfect shading,” said Charles Darwin.2

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Chapter One

A male clears an expanse of forest floor and utters loud calls. When a female arrives, he dances before her with his wings spread in a great circle. Females visit the dance floors of many males until finally choosing the most beautiful and graceful performer. The pair remains monogamous. In Europe in the sixteenth century rooms set aside for their collections by aristocrats and prosperous merchants came to be known as Wunderkammern or Cabinets de curiosités. They held religious relics (icons, fragments of the True Cross), paintings and jeweled boxes, ancient sculptures and coins, objects from far-away lands (wampum belts, Oriental footwear, carved alabaster panels and ivory tusks), dragon’s eggs, fossils and mineral specimens, and horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals (a dodo from Mauritius, the upper jaw of a walrus, armadillos). Unlike museums later, rationalizing and didactic, these rooms displayed the objects without order or context. Each was individually displayed, to give rise not to explanation but to astonishment, delight, wonder. There are twenty species of bowerbirds in New Guinea and Australia. They range from 21 to 38 centimeters in length. Male bowerbirds construct individual theaters, clearing the forest floor and then covering it with woven mats of leaves, carpets of moss, or gardens of flowers, and then erecting parallel walls of twigs that they regularly paint with juices of berries. Archbold bowerbirds in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea are one of the biggest species; they are black and the males with a golden crest. They also attach flowers or colored leaves in the twigs of trees above their collections of objets d’art, to a height of twelve feet. Vogelkop bowerbirds build dome-shaped pavilions eight feet long, six feet wide, and four and a half feet high. In front of their bowers or pavilions bowerbirds array collections of objects of specific colors, varying with the species and also the individual: a satin bowerbird first covers the display area with bright yellow leaves and flowers, and then on top arranges bright blue objects—feathers, flowers, butterflies, beetles, and berries pieces. One I observed on a university campus in New South Wales had in addition a gleaming collection of bright blue plastic bottle caps and drinking straws. Bowerbirds have also been observed creating optical

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illusions, arranging objects in the bower's court area from smallest to largest to produce a forced perspective. The bird named King of Saxony bird-of-paradise (by a museum director in Dresden fishing for patronage) inhabits montane forests of New Guinea and West Papua. The Papuan people call it "Kiss-a-ba" or “Leme,” as it names itself, sounds with which it announces itself when it arrives at a scene. The male is black with yellow breast and is 22 cm long. Planted on his head he has two scalloped enamel-blue plumes 50 cm long that he turns up and down, to the sides, ahead and to the back as he dances and sings in courtship ritual. These plumes have gleaming tabs on only one side of the shaft. These plumes are much prized by Archbold bowerbirds, who collect any they find molted by King of Saxony birds of paradise and feature them among them the objets d’art they collect and display. Papuan people steal the plumes from those bowers and decorate their heads with them. The long head feathers of male King of Saxony birds of paradise are admired by female King of Saxony birds of paradise, by Archbold bowerbirds, and by Papuan people. All three species have the same taste in visual beauty.

Notes 1

Theodore Xenophon Barber, 1993. The Human Nature of Birds: A Scientific Discovery with Startling Implications. New York: St. Martin’s Press., 132. 2 Charles Darwin, 1875, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York: Appleton, 3987, 2.

CHAPTER TWO FOLLOWING THE UNCHARTED WAY: AESTHETIC JOURNEYS ON LAND, SEA, AND WITHIN KIP REDICK Introduction We felt a slight breeze from the south, enough to keep the sail from hanging limp, and set a course toward the mouth of the Back River, where a spit of sand forming Factory Point separated the river from the Chesapeake Bay. My sister and I sailed this river regularly during our teenage years. Approaching the barrier spit we entered the deep channel that ran just offshore from the point. I called out, “ready about,” and turned the vessel into what little wind there was until our sail could catch it again, taking us back into the river. The tide was flowing rapidly out of the mouth of the river. The sandy point, just a few meters away, made it possible to measure our progress by watching the boat in relation to the shore. Right away I could see that the tide was much stronger than the wind, and we were being shuttled out toward the open waters of the bay. Dread washed over me as I realized that it had been the tide and not the wind that propelled us out to Factory Point. Now we would be pulled out into the bay, a place where I had rarely sailed. The prospect of the vast and open water of the bay in relation to our small and seemingly useless sailboat initiated an aesthetic experience approaching the sublime. We had one paddle, and I gave it to my sister, telling her to stoke for her life. I took the center board out and used it to paddle. We set a course north toward Plum Tree Island, where the tide would have less power in the shallow water. We were paddling perpendicular to the tide, and though

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we were moving into the bay, Plum Tree Island offered refuge. We finally reached the shallows near the island. Here the slight breeze was strong enough to overcome the tide. We slowly made our way back into the river. Though the Chesapeake Bay has been charted and sailed for centuries, it was a mysterious body of water for me. The familiar inlets and coves in the Back River were known. The interplay of charted and uncharted, of an aesthetic of the beautiful versus the sublime, revealed itself that day. Later in life, while in my early twenties, I worked commercial fishing boats in the Atlantic Ocean. I became familiar with charts indicating the ocean depths. We dropped heavy dredges and pulled scallops from the sea floor. The boats had state of the art navigation systems, Loran-C that used low frequency radio signals to locate position. Once we found a bed of scallops, the Loran-C helped us stay on top of them. Even though we followed the charts and relied on state-of-the-art navigation systems, riding out a storm could be a sublime experience. What good is a chart when the seas overcome one’s vessel? Again, the interplay of aesthetic experiences became manifest on the seas. The ocean is a vast wilderness. But sailors have learned to navigate the undulating waters by tracking the regular course of the stars. Compasses and sextants helped sailors find their way across this wilderness in relation to latitude. In more recent history, by the mid seventeen hundreds, chronometers allowed for navigation in relation to longitude. The oceans have been charted and measured. But if one were to venture into the ocean in a small sailing craft without GPS, compass, chronometer or sextant, it would appear as a vast wilderness of uncharted water. The interplay between charted and uncharted journeys across the ocean includes an aesthetic dimension, an experience with untamed beauty as the sublime or with peaceful, calm waters that seem to soothe the soul. The world of aesthetics has also been charted, measured, and conceptualized since Plato. Whereas Plato presents us with the myth of the cave in the Republic,1 he depicts a myth of the journey of ascent in the Symposium.2 Eros is said to be between wisdom and ignorance. In this way Eros, as others who lack both wisdom and ignorance, desires wisdom. Diotima tells Socrates, “He who does not think himself in need does not desire

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what he does not think he lacks.”3 Being in need of wisdom enacts desire and sets one in motion toward the desired thing, movement toward wisdom as a journey. Wisdom is also said to be beautiful, attracting Eros and those who journey in that direction, “For wisdom is surely among the most beautiful of things, but Eros is love of the beautiful; so Eros is necessarily a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, and, being a philosopher, intermediate between wisdom and ignorance.”4 Diotima goes on to ask, “Why does he who loves, love beautiful things?” and “What will he have who possesses beautiful things?”5 The answer gives us the terminus of the journey, to love the good that becomes one’s own forever.6 Rather than outlining an aesthetic theory, such as those set for by various philosophers from Plato through Heidegger, I will employ phenomenological description as a way of focusing on the interplay of charted and uncharted, exterior and interior aesthetic journeys. I will also explore the call coming from aesthetic experience itself and the response of communicating that experience. Phenomenology, in attempting to return to the things themselves, sets conceptualizations aside in order to discover an experience of the uncharted. Merleau-Ponty characterizes phenomenological description, writing that, “To turn back to the things themselves is to return to that world prior to knowledge of which knowledge speaks,”7 and “The real must be described and not constructed or constituted.”8 What follows is a phenomenological exploration of the interplay in aesthetic experience through descriptions of a few examples in relation to journey. In journeys at sea, I will first look at a selection of medieval literature, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, the voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot.9 Moving to interior journey, I will explore Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, as she carefully charts her mystical union with God and at the same time makes explicit that it is not a course anyone can follow.10 Bernini’s sculpture, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, is a response to Teresa’s communication of a mystical aesthetic experience. I will question whether this artwork remains faithful to the uncharted interior journey Teresa has described. Finally, I will return to journeys at sea and discuss a few of J. M. W. Turner’s paintings, with a special focus on his seascapes.

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Aesthetic Experience and Its Liturgical Action Plato’s journey of ascent involves a liturgical action: wisdom calls the philosopher, who is a lover of wisdom and intermediate between ignorance and wisdom, and the philosopher responds, beginning the journey toward wisdom. The telos of the journey is to love the good that in the end becomes one’s own, a terminus of communion. Whereas the terminus of the journey for Plato is to love the good, Christian liturgy can be understood as a journey completed in loving God. In both cases the journey rises out of a call which then initiates a response; a liturgy whereby the pilgrim moves from the initial call, through a response, answers another call, responds, and continues repeatedly until reaching the terminus. In Plato, the journey toward the good begins in the pilgrim’s youth with an exterior desire, a call to love beauty that arises from an experience with a single beautiful body. The young pilgrim responds by loving the immediate beautiful body. A further call directs this pilgrim/philosopher to the realization that other bodies less immediate have similar beauty. This in turn gives rise to a response wherein the sojourner begins to love the beautiful in all of the bodies. Through iterations of call and response the pilgrim/philosopher’s attention shifts to the soul and initiates an interior journey. Diotima depicts this liturgical journey as ascending a ladder. For the purposes of this essay, each rung of the ladder presents a call, and each step is the pilgrim’s response. Diotima says: Beginning from these beautiful things here, to ascend ever upward for the sake of that, the Beautiful, as though using the steps of a ladder, from one to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful practices, and from practices to beautiful studies, and from studies one arrives in the end at that study which is nothing other than the study of that, the Beautiful itself, and one knows in the end, by itself, what it is to be beautiful. . . . that human life is to be lived: in contemplating the Beautiful itself.11

Response in the liturgy of exterior and interior journeys also manifests through enactments of beautiful speech, ȖİȞȞ઼Ȟ ȜȩȖȠȣȢ țĮȜȠȪȢ.12 In conjunction with climbing the ladder, pilgrim/philosophers communicate their aesthetic experiences and thereby create artifacts, the enactment of

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poiesis. The enactment of beautiful speech is an action and form of art. That is, communicating one’s contemplation of beauty, one’s aesthetic experience in the form of beautiful speech, becomes art. In addition to ascending a ladder, this liturgy can also be understood as a journey with twists and turns whose terminus might be a return to the starting point. The Muslim mystic poet, Rumi, depicts such a journey in his story, “In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo: In Cairo Dreaming of Baghdad.”13 Similar to Plato’s philosopher who desires wisdom, but unlike that philosopher who is intermediate between ignorance and wisdom, Rumi’s pilgrim begins empty, “The Prophet has said that a true seeker must be completely empty like a lute to make the sweet music of Lord, Lord.”14 Rumi’s pilgrim receives the call while empty, “in a dream he heard a voice, ‘Your wealth is in Cairo. Go there to such and such a spot and dig, and you’ll find what you need.’”15 After journeying to Cairo and winding up in jail, the pilgrim discovers that his treasure is actually back in his home in Baghdad. The last stanza of the poem brings us back to the place of the original call, “The water of life is here. I’m drinking it. But I had to come this long way to know it!”16 Even though the desired thing was always there in Baghdad, the pilgrim needed to respond to the call and journey to Cairo in order to arrive at wisdom, to recognize the beauty of the desired thing. Pilgrim/philosophers become artists after responding to the call of an aesthetic experience. In responding pilgrim/philosophers communicate their experience by creating some artifact of expression, what the Greeks referred to as poiesis. The philosopher, in contrast to the artist, communicates aesthetic experience by explaining it in the form of dialectic, that is, through rational discourse. Ernesto Grassi notes that, “from Plato on, in the Western world, rational language became preeminent for determining beings and thus reality. Each word, in consequence of its rational definitions, aims at “fixing,” out of space and time, the meaning of a being.”17 But explanation does not necessarily fulfill the desire implanted by the call of an aesthetic experience. Owen Barfield contends that the rational principle can “in no sense . . . be said to expand consciousness. Only the poetic can do this: only poesy, pouring into language its creative intuitions, can preserve its living meaning and

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prevent it from crystallizing into a kind of algebra. ‘If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character,’ wrote William Blake, ‘the philosophic and experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, and stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round.’”18 The philosopher in using rational discourse plots an already charted course. Maurice Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between rational and creative discourse writing, “Language bears the meaning of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a body. The empirical use of already established language should be distinguished from its creative use. Empirical language can only be the result of creative language.”19 Creative language leaves a footprint, a charted course for rational discourse to follow. Merleau-Ponty continues, “Speech in the sense of empirical language—that is, the opportune recollection of a pre-established sign—is not speech in respect to an authentic language.”20 Authentic language would rise in relation to an uncharted course. Richard Lanigan, in exploring Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between authentic and empirical speech writes “Speech is ‘authentic’ when it is primordial, creative, and expressive of existential meaning.”21 Lanigan further describes the interplay of the two forms of speech, “the sedimentation of authentic speech creates empirical speech.”22 Sedimentation, a “crystallizing into a kind of algebra,”23 sets a charted course through thematizing. Emmanuel Levinas describes thematizing as grasping “across an ideality on the basis of a said.”24 It is in saying rather than the said that creative intuitions communicate existential meaning. Such saying is always an adventure as it follows an uncharted course. In the thematization of the said there is no adventure, “Anything unknown that can occur to it is in advance disclosed, open, manifest, is cast in the mould of the known, and cannot be a complete surprise.”25 So, in order to encounter an alterity, to authentically respond to the call of beauty given through a meeting with an Other, one cannot be conscious in this way, grasping across an ideality on the basis of the said. Levinas wants to start in a place other than that of the “philosophical tradition of the West, wherein “all spirituality lies in consciousness, thematic exposition of being, knowing” that is as represented in sedimented speech. He writes, “In starting with sensibility interpreted not as a knowing but as proximity, in seeking in language

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contact and sensibility, behind the circulation of information it becomes, we have endeavoured to describe subjectivity as irreducible to consciousness and thematization. Proximity appears as the relationship with the other, who cannot be resolved into ‘images’ or be exposed to a theme.”26 The Other encountered in this way is not “able to appear” in a theme. Rather than appearance the invisibility of encounter “becomes contact and obsession” by an alternative “way of signifying quite different from that which connects exposition to sight.”27 It “signifies in saying before showing itself in the said.”28 This is not a signification “given in consciousness” which would be a taming or domesticating theme, an immanence, versus “its adjacency in proximity” “an absolute exteriority”,29 rather, “it is always ‘already in the past’ behind which the present delays, over and beyond the ‘now’ which this exteriority disturbs or obsesses.” Finally, “without allowing itself to be invested by the ȐȡȤȒ of consciousness” it is a “trace.”30 The already charted course of the philosopher discloses a thematization, “the ȐȡȤȒ of consciousness,” and is unable to describe the encounter that is already in the past, a trace. The artist—poet, painter, sculptor, architect, musician—communicates aesthetic experience through various forms of creative expression. The philosopher, employing empirical language, also creates an artifact that is set forth in the form of rational discourse. In each case we are given an artifact of communication. Persons who experience these artifacts, rationally articulated by a philosopher or creatively expressed by an artist, may discover a charted course, either toward understanding or in responding to aesthetic experience. They may be moved by an aesthetic experience produced by the artifact. That is, the artifact mediates the aesthetic experience. In each case they are removed from the experience being communicated, either through the abstraction of rational speech or the creation of a work of art. In this regard C. S. Lewis writes: Human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete-this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. . . . In the enjoyment of a great

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myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.31

Or, in the enjoyment of a great work of art, aesthetic experience is mediated so that we come near but are still removed from the primal encounter. The primal aesthetic encounter as immediate remains a personal experience, a memory until it is communicated. Communication mediates the experience, abstracting from the primal occurrence. Through each of the various approaches in creating a work of art, the artist communicates and mediates, which might be following a well-established course, a charted way. The art of ancient Egypt shows a highly charted way. Daniel Boorstin writes, “The Egyptians’ ‘canon,’ an archetype for the sculptured human figure, may be the most durable pattern in the history of art.”32 Both sculpture and painting adhered to “precise proportions” and “were followed for some twenty-two hundred years, longer than the whole Christian era.”33 Jane Ellen Harrison traces the rise of ancient art from ritual performance. Both “do not seek to copy a fact, but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion.”34 The Greek ritual, dromenon, is both to feel and express an impulse.35 The re-enactment of the hunt in a dance as a representation “cuts itself loose from the particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as it were abstracted.”36 This abstracted form “becomes material for the magical dance, the dance pre-done.”37 Boorstin traces a similar impulse to perform magic in Egyptian art. Rather than taking the form of dance, Egyptian art expresses emotion through sculpture and painting, “Their conventional style, conforming to its own rigid canon, became an institution to be preserved with their religion.”38 As magic requires strict adherence to a formula, a strictly charted course, “Egyptian sculpture could not be the product of fancy, imagination, or originality.”39 As a form of magic and “since Egyptian sculpture was itself a religious institution, the continuity of their religion required a timeless sculptural style.”40 The Egyptian artist, just as those who conduct rituals, remains anonymous in conjunction with the continuity of style, the charted course.41 Similar to abstraction in the Greek dance “Egyptian society idealized changelessness, so Egyptian sculptors aimed at an abstraction

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suggested by what was seen. They succeeded so well so early that they felt little need to ‘perfect’ their style.”42 The question arises, is there an uncharted way in aesthetics? Plato’s dialogues present a new interpretation of art and at the same time become an art form in their own right. Plato’s dialogues are examples of both rational discourse and poetic enactment. Plato is both philosopher and artist. His dialogues have a poetic character and can be interpreted as an art form. Leo Tolstoy is also both a philosopher and an artist. His treatise, What is Art?, sets forth in rational discourse a theory of art.43 The way followed is clearly charted as Tolstoy interacts with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kant, to name a few. Tolstoy decides not to focus on beauty but on understanding art, which may be a foray into the uncharted world of aesthetics. Tolstoy’s great works of fiction show him to be a great artist with the acute ability to describe some of humanities’ deepest thoughts and emotions. In the following section I will interact with another writer, St. Brendan the Navigator, whose medieval book, The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot, was translated into many languages and widely read in Europe.44 “The popular story of the Atlantic sea voyage of Brendan is extant in over 120 manuscripts covering a 600-year period, from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries.”45 The manuscript is “amongst the earliest printed works in any language.”46

Saint Brendan the Navigator Saint Brendan’s book was influenced by the concept of peregrination pro Christo.47 Here pilgrims leave their homeland “to serve Christ in a foreign place.”48 The story falls into the literary genre of the immram, a voyage or sea journey, and “developed out of the religious ideal and practice of pilgrimage overseas, the necessity of leaving family, friends and country for the love of God.”49 Dorothy Ann Bray writes, “Brendan’s ocean-going experience becomes the Christian quest for eternal bliss (the heavenly home) adapted into the Irish literary tradition of the search for the happy Otherworld.”50 Consistent with Plato’s ascent of the ladder, this Irish aesthetic ideal leads the pilgrim across the sea and toward the Otherworld.

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Pilgrimage in general and this specific form of Irish pilgrimage follows the liturgy of aesthetic experience, the call to go out from one’s homeland and the responding quest to journey. William Thrall writes that such pilgrims “hoped, under guidance of God, to find somewhere in the sea a desert island where they might find their earthly paradise.”51 This aesthetic ideal resulted in “a whole genre of literature, made up of narratives known collectively as voyage tales,” that were “inspired by the actual historical experiences of peregrini.”52 It is interesting to note that “the island geography which forms the core of the Voyage of Brendan is, actually, real.”53 “The author of the Voyage of Brendan constructed a narrative that was rooted in actual maritime experiences. However, he wove together actuality with religions concerns. It is a testimony to the skill of the text that so many people still take it literally.”54 For example, “Columbus mentioned Brendan’s Island, the Earthly Paradise, in his diary. It remained on navigational charts into the eighteenth century.”55 The aesthetic aspect of this story was also important in the medieval period. Anderson writes, “Fiction, especially depicting a journey or pilgrimage to explore spiritual or psychological struggle, was a popular medieval literary form and was to become the hallmark of the neoplatonic School of Chartres during the twelfth-century Renaissance.”56 This medieval aesthetic is expressed in nonrepresentational style, “In works of this kind, time and space are not as we know them in the world around us. Still, they do not represent or constitute an unreal world, but rather the externalization of a psychological world.”57 In this way Brendan’s narrative describes both an internal and external journey. Anderson notes that the goal of the voyage also has an aesthetic element, “to see the magnalia Dei (wonders of God), to witness the sacramentum rei (mystery of creation).”58 In addition to this Platonic ideal, “that human life is to be lived: in contemplating the Beautiful itself,”59 witnessing the mystery of creation points to an aesthetics of the natural world. Bray writes, “the joy of nature and the celebration of God’s creation, is also reflected in the Navigatio. Despite the many dangers on the ocean, the monks experience supreme awe at the natural world which surround them; it is a communion with nature and God as profound as the hermit’s in the woods.”60 The liturgy of the aesthetic leads Brendan toward

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“achieving unity with God through liturgical prayer and contemplation”61 as well as deepening a communion with creation through experiencing its beauty. Even the voyage’s seven years duration portrays an aesthetics of perfection.62 The story of Brendan’s journey opens with a visit from another Irish monk, Father Barinthus, who tells of his own journey at sea, to the island called the Land of Promise of the Saints. Father Barinthus and his fellow monks tell Brendan about an aesthetic experience they had while journeying. The power of the experience continues to manifest as Barinthus “could only weep, and cast himself prostrate, and continue longer in prayer.”63 Brendan seems moved by this manifestation and asks Barinthus to “refresh our souls by recounting to us the various wonders you have seen upon the great ocean.”64 When pressed to give an account, Barinthus reenacts the journey through a telling, a performance of beautiful speech. While sailing to the west clouds and dense fog shrouded the way and then a great light revealed land “spacious and [with] grass, and bearing all manner of fruits.”65 Barinthus and his fellow monks stayed for fifteen days exploring the island, which he later calls the paradise of God. The story itself, an artistic enactment recounting an aesthetic experience, evoked a call and response from Brenden and his fellows, “Having heard all this, St. Brendan and his brethren cast themselves on the ground, giving glory to God.”66 This response is consistent with biblical accounts wherein human beings, having had an aesthetic experience, and in responding to the call of that experience, offer up praise. Psalm 104 presents a long list of natural wonders, beautiful to behold, including sun and moon, earth and sea, and all creatures therein. In the final stanzas the psalmist offers up praise.67 Brendan, inspired by the account, selects fourteen monks to accompany him on a journey to the island that Barinthus described. They build a boat and provision it with supplies for the voyage. Their journey takes seven years, though the island was said to be only a few days journey west of Ireland. In this way, Brendan and his fellows diverge from Barinthus’ described journey, a charted course, and find themselves in uncharted waters. Yet, there is a cyclical pattern over the uncharted extent of the long journey. Bray writes, “The monks follow a defined route through the year;

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although the narrative takes them to strange places in each cycle, they constantly return to the island visited in the first cycle which were the sites of their festival celebrations.”68 On the way they have adventures on the sea, on other islands, and encounters with monsters and creatures such as a whale and singing birds. At times they could not tell which direction they were sailing.69 The duration of their time at sea meant fasting or taking food every second day in order to survive. Their encounter with the singing white birds, which revealed themselves as doomed angels who take the form of birds on feast days and sing praises to God, resulted in a prophecy that the voyage would take six more years.70 That these white birds are really spirits wandering “the air, and earth, and sky,” and only taking bodily form on feast days in order to sing praises, shows Brendan’s form of Christianity differing greatly from other forms influenced by Plato. Rather than a journey of ascent, climbing the ladder charted by Plato, starting from bodies and culminating in pure contemplation, here the desired end is to sing praise that requires a body. As Psalm 104 shows, singing praises itself is an aesthetic enactment in response to the call of an aesthetic experience. Further passages in the text indicate the uncharted way and describe what later aestheticians would label an experience of the sublime. They “were tossed about to and fro on the billows of the ocean for the space of three months, during which they could see nothing but sea and sky.”71 At some point in the journey the group is not able to use technologies meant for keeping a vessel on a charted course, “the vessel, without the use of oar or sail, drifted about in various directions, until the beginning of Lent.”72 They meet another person on an island, a hermit, who also expresses a similar experience. The hermit tells Brenden, “I entered the boat, and rowed along for three days and nights, and then I allowed the boat to drift whether the wind drove it.”73 When they finally do discover the “promised” paradise, the mystery of the journey is described, “This is the land you have sought after for so long a time; but you could not hitherto find it, because Christ our Lord wished, first to display to you His divers mysteries in this immense ocean.”74 As they sail back home, the return journey insures that the way will remain uncharted, “he embarked once more and sailed back through the darkness again.”75 Rather than a ladder

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of ascent, here the aesthetic journey is closer to Rumi’s account, with twists and turns and a return to the origin of the call, only after having encountered a vast array of elements provoking an aesthetic response. Finally, Brendan sets the account down in a written form of beautiful speech, which in turn spreads across Europe provoking various aesthetic liturgies of call and response.

Saint Teresa of Avila Saint Brendan could have completed the journey in just a few weeks but took seven years. Saint Teresa also addresses both the difficulty and longevity of the journey and its disassociation from a practical movement from one location to another. She writes, “we seem to be walking along and getting fatigued all the time—for, believe me, it is an exhausting road—we shall be very lucky if we escape getting lost.”76 She asks, “Would it not be better to get the journey over and done with?”77 As Brendan encountered hinderances, so Teresa also mentions them, “For there are all these obstacles for us to meet and there is also the danger of serpents.”78 In spite of such tribulations, the journey continues and requires personal attention, “When we proceed with all this caution, we find stumbling-blocks everywhere; for we are afraid of everything, and so dare not go farther, as if we could arrive at these Mansions by letting others make the journey for us!”79 Following the way through whatever obstacles or tribulation is the only way to complete the journey. While Brendan’s journey exemplifies an Irish form of peregrination pro Christo and an aesthetic experience both exterior and interior, Teresa’s journey is continental, medieval and thoroughly interior. Umberto Eco describes the medieval aesthetic sensibility as “an apprehension of all of the relations, imaginative and supernatural, subsisting between the contemplated object and a cosmos which opened on to the transcendent. It meant discerning in the concrete object an ontological reflection of, and participation in, the being and the power of God.”80 In Teresa’s Interior Castle the aesthetic liturgy of call and response manifests through various forms. Plato points to a beautiful body that initiates the journey. Brendan hears the call as Barinthus enacts the story of his own encounter with beauty on the island of God’s paradise. In line

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with Eco’s description of medieval aesthetic sensibilities, Teresa writes, “His appeals come through the conversations of good people, or from sermons, or through the reading of good books, and there are many other ways, of which you have heard, in which God calls us.”81 Brendan heard the appeal through “beautiful speech” when he listened to Barinthus, what Teresa refers to as “conversations of good people.” The motivation for Teresa is also similar to Brenden, she writes, “our own task is only to journey with good speed so that we may see the Lord.”82 Here, good speed would refer to goodness while journeying, an attention to the desired beauty, not with quickly traveling from one point to another. Eco writes that for Plotinus, “the interior Idea was a sublime and perfect prototype through which the artist enjoyed an intellectual vision of the fundamental principles of nature.”83 Teresa enjoins her readers to have an undivided focus toward this interior Idea, which would in turn lead to encountering whom she refers to as her Divine Majesty, a sublime vision. Teresa describes this sublime, interior vision that transcends normal bodily senses writing, “For as long as the soul is in this state, it can neither see nor hear nor understand.”84 As an interior vision “seeing” the Lord transcends even the imagination. She goes on to clarify how the soul could see or understand when it neither sees nor understands, “I am not saying that it saw it at the time, but that it sees it clearly afterwards, and not because it is a vision, but because of a certainty . . . put there by God.”85 So, as the interior pilgrim moves through the fourth mansion and apprehends Beauty, Teresa seems to evoke Plato’s upper stair, “As these Mansions are now getting near to the place where the King dwells, they are of great beauty and there are such exquisite things to be seen and appreciated in them.”86 Of course, we must continually remind ourselves that seeing and appreciating symbolize contemplation. Teresa writes, “For as long as the soul is in this state, it can neither see nor hear nor understand.”87 Teresa’s use of various rooms, mansions, in a castle as a metaphor for the journey inward involves a mystical paradox. She seems to be mapping out a clear path by describing the interior journey as through a castle, yet throughout her description the reader is continually warned that this is no charted course. She points out that others have charted the course but that

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she is not able, “It is sometimes said that the soul enters within itself and sometimes that it rises above itself; but I cannot explain things in that kind of language, for I have no skill in it.”88 Remember the distinction between rational and poetic speech that we read in Barfield, Grassi, Lanigan, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty.89 In “On the Four Stages of Prayer” she writes, “How this prayer they call union happens and what it is, I cannot explain. Mystical theology explains it, and I am unable to use the proper terms.”90 She even sheds doubt on her own knowledge of the proper path writing, “there is no reason why we should expect everyone else to travel by our own road, and we should not attempt to point them to the spiritual path when perhaps we do not know what it is.”91 Teresa’s artistic description should therefore not be interpreted as a detailed map to follow for discovering this aesthetic experience. She is not giving us a rational analysis or explanation. She emphasizes that her description of this sublime vision, this state of absorption will not lead the reader to an understanding. She writes that only those who have experienced it themselves will be able to relate. Only pilgrims who have journeyed on this inward and unknown way themselves will understand. Unlike Plato’s reference to the experience leading to beautiful speech, speech in the form of dialectic, she writes, “He fills it with fervent desire, by means so delicate that the soul itself does not understand them, nor do I think I shall succeed in describing them in such a way as to be understood, except by those who have experienced it.”92 How could the pilgrim show the way when the sublime vision is never attained through self-effort, but is gifted? The aesthetic encounter happens “when a person is quite unprepared . . . and not even thinking of God, he is awakened . . . the soul is aware that it has been called by God . . . it begins to tremble.”93 In this aesthetic liturgy, trembling is the pilgrim’s response to the call of awakening. As Brendan offers praise, Teresa trembles. Isaiah similarly responds to such a vision with “Woe is me! For I am lost.”94 Brendan experiences an exterior sublime, being overwhelmed in the wilderness of a great ocean. Teresa’s sublime experience is inward, in the wilderness of her own soul. She writes that the person “is conscious of having been most delectably wounded, but cannot say how or by whom; but it is certain that this is a precious experience and it would be glad if it

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were never to be healed of that wound.”95 Her artistic account highlights the paradox of the experience involving “great grief” and being “sweet and delectable.” Her aesthetically oriented description gives the reader a picture of the ineffable, ephemeral, and sublime encounter with the Divine that results in an experience of rapture. In one beautiful description, possibly the inspiration for Bernini’s sculpture located in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, she writes: this distress seems to penetrate to its very bowels; and that, when He that has wounded it draws out the arrow, the bowels seem to come with it, so deeply does it feel this love. . . . the fire is not hot enough to burn it up, and the experience is very delectable, the soul continues to feel the pain and the mere touch suffices to produce that effect in it. . . . this delectable pain, which is not really pain, is not continuous: sometimes it lasts for a long time, while sometimes it comes suddenly to an end, . . . for it is a thing which no human means can procure. Although occasionally the experience lasts for a certain length of time, it goes and comes again; . . . never permanent. . . and leaves the soul yearning once again to suffer that loving pain of which it is the cause.96

Her account of the aesthetic experience incorporates bodily sensations to show the reader something of the depth of this sublime rapture. Yet, considering all of the qualifications in previous descriptions, the reader cannot easily absorb the account. Who has ever been pierced by an arrow and then had that dart drawn out, penetrating one’s insides and dragging them outside the body? The reader can only imagine from a distance, unless, as Teresa indicates, they have also experienced this kind of rapture. Looking at Bernini’s sculpture and contemplating all that Teresa has written might lead the viewer to question Bernini’s interpretation. Truly, Bernini seems to have received the liturgical call of an aesthetic experience through reading Teresa’s account. He interacts with an artifact that may have been created as Teresa’s response to a very personal encounter with the Divine. She then communicated her experience poetically in the form of “beautiful speech,” “ȖİȞȞ઼Ȟ ȜȩȖȠȣȢ țĮȜȠȪȢ”.97 Bernini’s sculpture seems to depict Teresa’s rapture wherein the arrow of love is raised just before penetrating to the very bowels. But the sculpture falls short of communicating Teresa’s description of the failure on the part

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of the one who experiences the rapture to understand, even to the point of her not succeeding in the description. Rather, in viewing the sculpture one might grasp the look of rapture on the face of Teresa, see the arrow poised to penetrate, ponder the smirk on the face of the angel holding the dart, and witness her limp body hidden under the robe she wears. The image incarnated in stone, frozen in the fleeting moment that Teresa describes as ephemeral—"never completely enkindles the soul; for, just as the soul is about to become enkindled, the spark dies, and leaves the soul yearning once again to suffer that loving pain of which it is the cause”98— communicates clearly. Who could stand before this sculpture and not feel the ecstasy? But this is not what Teresa describes. The image has been abstracted from a few sentences of Teresa’s greater corpus. In addition to freezing an excerpt of Teresa’s experience into immovable stone, Bernini adds an additional element to the installation so that the sculpture depicts a group of onlookers, two galleries of male voyeurs. They appear on either side of the images of Teresa and the angel with his arrow poised to pierce her heart. They watch from theater boxes, peering down on Teresa as if watching the drama unfold. Some of them turn to one another as if to comment among themselves or to revel in the shared aesthetic experience of viewing such a sight. They marvel at the depiction and seem to invite the living to also be filled with astonishment at what is happening to Teresa. But such seems far from Teresa’s account. She is not inviting the reader into a rapture induced by interacting with her artifact. Her art is not a script to be played on a stage so that theater goers have their aesthetic fancies satiated. We arrive at a point of distinction between aesthetic experiences. Teresa invites the reader to encounter for themselves her Divine Majesty, or from Plato’s point of view, to contemplate Beauty as it is in itself. But her contemplation does not arise from some aloof philosophical seat. C. S. Lewis captures the human desire to participate in the beauty versus merely see it writing, “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”99 Her communion is full participation, the self being emptied of itself and unable

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to perform beautiful speech until much later. She would have the reader begin their own journey with no guarantee of reaching the terminus. Bernini, on the other hand, invites the viewer to experience beauty in the sculpted stone image. Teresa is not satiated by the experience; she needs love to bring her into a relationship wherein the aesthetic encounter happens between her and her Divine Majesty. Bernini’s sculpture can only happen as an aesthetic experience for the viewer; there is no relationship. Jean-Luc Marion helps clarify the difference between these two aesthetic happenings. He writes, “the idol and the icon are distinguishable . . . inasmuch as each makes use of its visibility in its own way.”100 Bernini’s sculpture “makes use of its visibility” by attracting the gaze of onlookers to its beautiful contours. Marion writes that the idol “fascinates and captivates the gaze precisely because everything in it must expose itself to the gaze, attract, fill, and hold it.”101 In this way the one gazing at the idol experiences an aesthetic of their own making while interacting with the image. Teresa’s text, on the other hand, leads the reader on a journey beyond themselves and into uncharted territory. Teresa describes her own interior, sublime encounter and calls the reader to begin their own journey. The text indicates that she is not in control. She is not the author of the experience but only describes what has happened. Levinas also describes this kind of experience in exploring the relation of the-one-for-the-other. He writes, “the subject is affected without the source of the affection becoming a theme of representation. We have called this relationship irreducible to consciousness obsession.”102 Teresa continually qualifies her description of the source of her affection, reiterating that her Divine Majesty transcends her understanding, is not reduced to consciousness. Teresa is obsessed as Levinas writes. Levinas’ description further coheres with that of Teresa, “It is irreducible even though it “overwhelms” consciousness. . . . It undoes thematization, and escapes any principle, origin, will, or ȐȡȤȒ, which are put forth in every ray of consciousness.”103 Underscoring the happening, that the origin of the aesthetic encounter transcends her consciousness, and her reception is entirely passive, Levinas describes obsession as an “inversion of consciousness” and a “passivity beneath all passivity. It cannot be defined in terms of intentionality.”104 Teresa’s encounter is beyond intentionality, whereas the

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aesthetic experience of the viewer of Bernini’s sculpture is thoroughly intentional. Levinas writes, “the given enters into a thought which recognizes in it or invests it with its own project, and thus exercises mastery over it.”105 Bernini’s gallery of onlookers demonstrates the same intentionality as the living person who gazes at the sculpture, each invest it with their own project. In her obsession Teresa finds communion with the one who has pierced her. In her passivity she is invited into beauty without thematizing it. Juxtaposing Levinas with Teresa shows the possibility of transforming contemplation into a self-emptying communion. In contemplation that is based on beautiful speech as dialectic, the viewer stands aloof and remains in control. The image as idol facilitates such contemplation. Marion writes, “The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gaze’s image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim.”106 There is no communion between an idol and the one contemplating. There is only the onlooker gazing back upon theirself, a contemplation of their thematization. Teresa’s communion follows from a form of iconic prayer. Marion writes, “The icon does not result from a vision but provokes one.”107 Her prayer is both a waiting and a consciousness being overwhelmed, a shattering of her will. She continually reiterates that her vision that is not a vision originates from the Other. Marion describes this vision that is not vision, “The icon is not seen, but appears, or more originally seems, looks like.”108 Teresa, unable to explain or understand the encounter gives the reader a “seeming,” a “looks like.” Marion writes, “Whereas the idol results from the gaze that aims at it, the icon summons sight in letting the visible . . be saturated little by little with the invisible.”109 Here is Teresa’s vision that is not vision. Marion’s description shows Teresa’s encounter with her “Divine Majesty” and wounding her in love, “the icon opens in a face that gazes at our gazes in order to summon them to its depth.”110 A depth depicted by a dart piercing the body. Teresa does not see. She is seen. Not by a gallery of voyeurs or an audience of aesthetic admirers, rather, in summoning Teresa’s gazes to this depth, she is lead through an uncharted aesthetic wherein her vision is not vision but gifted from the Other whom she loves.

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J. M. W. Turner Shifting our attention from the Medieval and our brief foray through the Renaissance with Bernini’s High Roman Baroque sculpture of Saint Teresa, we look to the naissance of the modern and J. M. W. Turner’s paintings. While earlier art had been dominated by mythological and religious subjects, modern art focused more on the elements of the natural world. Leading up to this new focus, sixteenth-century European painters moved landscape from background to foreground. E. H. Gombrich writes that at this time, “landscape became an acknowledged subject for both painting and prints” and that such painting became an institution.111 New markets opened the way for specialized genre paintings to emerge from the previously patronage dominated art world. Paul Johnson writes, “The entire economic basis of art was changing. As with music, princely patronage was yielding to the market.”112 In addition to patronage, the market also brought in an expanded public. The National Gallery in London was opened to the public in May 1824, “But the democratization of art began in earnest in 1793, when the Revolutionary regime admitted the public to the royal collections in the Louvre.”113 Turner was influenced by some of the landscape painters from the Continent such as Claude Lorraine. Gombrich writes, “it was Claude who first opened people’s eyes to the sublime beauty of nature, and for nearly a century after his death travelers used to judge a piece of real scenery according to his standards.”114 In addition to paintings, Turner came into maturity as an artist during a time rich in philosophical rhetoric attempting to understand and explain this new turn in aesthetics. Descriptive terms such as “picturesque,” “beautiful,” and “sublime” took on new meaning as critics argued over the aesthetic valuation of landscape art. Edmond Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published in 1756, was a comprehensive attempt to distinguish between the aesthetic categories of the sublime and the beautiful.115 The English inquiry into the sublime distinguished between rhetorical and the natural. Marjorie Hope Nicolson writes that “the natural Sublime was flowering in England . . . and travelers to the Alps were ‘ravished’ and ‘rapt’ by greatness, appalled and enthralled by the vast, the grand, the Sublime in external Nature”116 Burke includes both the natural

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and the rhetorical but does not make the natural sublime a subcategory of the rhetorical. Burke’s definition of the sublime characterizes it as the strongest emotion that can be produced, caused by something that we would call awesome: whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.117

The sublime experienced in nature results in a passion of astonishment, “that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it.”118 Burke also establishes an aesthetic paideia. He writes, “It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.”119 Imitation itself would be an art, but Burke says that “art can never give the rules that make art.”120 Burke is pointing to what I have been referring to as a charted course in art, both for artists and philosophers, as artists had been imitating one another rather than nature “and this with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as guides.”121 Burke himself looks for an uncharted course, moving beyond art and directly to nature in understanding the sublime. This causes a philosophical move away from Platonic ideals. Perfection and beauty were to be discovered in nature as it exists independent of human alteration, and therefore not abstracting beauty from the natural setting. The classical practice measuring beauty in abstraction while on the journey to perfection is abandoned, a reversal of the Platonic ideal. Qualities experienced in nature and indicative of perfection reflect irregularity. Irregularity indicative of the sublime produces overwhelming experiences. Burke had gone so far as to indicate that the beautiful, productive of comforting experiences, is also indicated by irregularity. English explorations of aesthetics comprised a struggle to comprehend perfect beauty intrinsic in nature. Arguments between the eighteenth and

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early nineteenth century critics and artists show that these concepts were still being debated. This is the aesthetic milieu, the charted world of aesthetics in which Turner produces his art. Burke’s charting of the sublime influenced landscape painters around 1800.122 Turner’s painting techniques communicate the power of the sublime through visual poetry, what Burke had articulated in prose. Also influencing Turner in this charted world is the interplay between rational and poetic discourses. In addition to the rational as articulated by English aesthetic philosophers, Turner was attracted to poetry in its literary form and the visual rhetoric of painting. Tuner believed “that painting is a form of language, that it is essentially descriptive, and that its object is to tell the truth about nature, seen objectively. He believed that paintings have a moral purpose, too, to instruct and improve—hence the literary content—but that they do so by showing the effect of light on objects.”123 He read and wrote poetry, “A hard-bitten professional painter like J. M. W. Turner was passionately attached to reading and thinking about poetry, without which it is impossible to understand his more imaginative work.”124 “In the late 1820s he discovered an affinity with Shelley. . . . Turner found he had tried to put down air and atmosphere and infinite spaces in words, as Turner was himself seeking to do in paint.”125 In composing his own poems “Turner gave an added dimension to the drama and poetry in his paintings.”126 In this regard James Hamilton writes, “Poetry was the variant art for him in which he expressed ideas and urges that painting and drawing, even in his hands, were not fully competent to articulate.”127 Turner reflected on the new form of photography, an uncharted aesthetic at the time, “as photography crept in—the art of the single, crystal-clear reproduced monochrome image perceived through the single glass eye— so Turner’s art moved into orchestrated prismatic colors, the double image, the indistinct, the operatic; that is, everything that photography could not do.”128 His interaction with photography was informative and positive, “There is an enormous significance in the fact that Turner’s prismatic harmonies came in the 1840s after the introduction of photography. They are no knee-jerk reactions to the new discoveries, because of the many threads from Turner’s later manner that run deep into

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his painting of the 1820s and ‘30s. . . . the new science had a liberating effect on Turner, giving him ‘permission’ to do what photography could not.”129 Burke’s attention to aesthetic experience directly rising from nature versus art, as uncharted in this time, illuminates a possible new liturgical call and response with Turner. He clearly felt the call as it manifested in his interaction with other painters, poets and philosophers. But Turner seems to have felt a different call as he toured the countryside. Laure Meyer writes, “From 1792 to 1801 he travelled extensively through Wales, the North of England, Yorkshire and the Lake District.”130 In 1802 he traveled to the continent and through the Alps. These sublime mountains “were a shock and a revelation . . . for which his visits to the Lake District had not prepared him.”131 The Alps “gave him a first-hand vision of the sublime.”132 He visited the Low Countries in 1815 and Italy in 1819, returning several more times to Italy in 1828, 1833 and 1840.133 In addition to the awe of great mountains, travels to Italy revealed the play of the elements, “The light was of a quality of which he had never dreamed and for which nothing, not even his earlier visit to France in 1802, had prepared him.”134 This embodied travel brought about new experiments with light and color with a focus on the sublime.135 In 1841 he visited Switzerland again and his paintings inspired there “reveal his quasireligious response to the grandeur of nature.”136 In responding to these calls from direct experience in nature, Turner set out in uncharted waters for a painter. Part of that response was in the way he used his brush, “Turner’s dynamic application of paint in an undefined, dragged style became an integral part of his landscape paintings—and created space to incorporate other content.”137 In referencing Turner’s painting, Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons, Ines Richter-Musso writes, “The thickly applied paint and his impetuous brushstrokes are evidence of an energetic painting technique that corresponds to the terrible power of this natural disaster. Furthermore, Turner is able to approximate the material qualities of the element water in his paint in its aggregate states of snow and rain.”138

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This uncharted way of painting required some getting used to by those who were familiar with other landscape paintings. One way Turner drew viewers toward appreciating his paintings came through his verbal rhetoric, alluding to having witnessed some of the events depicted in his paintings. Richter-Musso writes, “This was necessary because his landscape paintings demanded too much of contemporary viewers.”139 Turner’s response attempted to communicate direct experience by painting events artistically versus prosaically, “Turner was no longer interested in the event itself but in depicting the experience artistically. Furthermore, he was attracted to the viewer’s potential to experience such a situation.”140 Turner’s depictions of “impermanence, incomprehensibility and potential” “make the subjectivity and imagination of the viewer an integral part of the work. For the first time in the history of art, the subjective impression made when viewing a work of art was turned by Turner into the subject of the painting itself—a strategy which did not find a consensus until the Impressionists.”141 One of Turner’s unique contributions to such painting is “his ability to incorporate the viewer’s own experience as a dimension of his painting.”142 The newly charted course in painting was not immediately appreciated by critics who “reproached Turner for allowing the elements air, earth and water to almost entirely subsume the historical subject matter.”143 Here the critics don’t understand how the sea paintings were the result of careful attention to detail witnessed in firsthand experience. That experience was beyond them because their visual knowledge of the interactions of the elements came from paintings. They were simply not able to comprehend Turner’s careful attention to the movement of water and the play of light, , “when a critic talks of sea ‘like marble-dust’ or the famous remark about Snowstorm—Steamboat off a Harbor’s Mouth . . . being like ‘soapsuds and whitewash,’ he is fumbling with words, laced more or less with abuse and lacking” objectivity.144 Laure Meyer writes, “Turner was alone in his generation in the intensity with which he responded to light and colour, and the only one to express this vision through purely pictorial means. He was far in advance of his time, and the gap which divided him from the public became more exaggerated as the years went by until, towards the very end of his life, they found his paintings almost totally incomprehensible.”145

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But those who opened themselves to the uncharted in Turner, discovered a valued aesthetic experience through viewing his paintings, and John Ruskin provided important insight into Turner’s intensions.146 Ruskin praised the uniqueness of Turner and became his champion among the critics. Rather than meaningless depictions of the sea, Ruskin finds “Turner’s depiction of the turbulent sea” not to be “formless but as ‘untraceable’ and full of energy and movement—just like nature.”147 Richter-Musso writes, “According to Ruskin, the work conveys an ecstatic identification with natural elements and their powerful independent existence.”148 Ruskin was pointing out that “Turner did not treat the elements individually or as separate substances, but highlighted their fusion, their interdependence and their transformative power.”149 In exploring the uncharted in painting, Turner becomes the “founder of modern landscape painting.”150 Though he traveled across land extensively and drew inspiration from direct experience, his depictions of the sea were limited to mostly viewing it from the shore. “Turner had no personal experience of deep ocean voyages.”151 Even so, his careful attention to the movement of water, the way light plays on its surface, and the variation in colors in an interplay of weather and sky produced a poetic response to his aesthetic call from the ocean. Combined with Burke’s writings on the sublime and the aesthetic call produced by experiences at the seashore, Turner responded with painted poetry in seascapes. Richter-Musso writes, “Schooled in the aesthetic of the sublime, Turner was particularly drawn to the element of water.”152 The sea presents a vast and uncharted wilderness, the perfect subject for a painter interested in the sublime: In contrast to landscape, which centuries of human activity changes irrevocably, the sea remains the same whatever may happen upon it. The sea has no memory. A sense of place at sea can be indicated or extinguished at the artist’s will, and at his will also the sea can equally render both a moment of time and an eternity. The particular fascination of the sea for humanity across the centuries is rooted in its elemental, uncontrollable, and immeasurable force, which human being can watch, harvest, and travel upon but can never direct.”153

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Turner is moving away from a composition constructed through imaginative practice and toward laying down in pigment the way water interacts with the other elements, “His convincing representation of water is based on his profound knowledge of how the movement of water is influenced by wind and currents.”154 As a result, he is able to create an aesthetic experience for his viewers by communicating the power of the sea, bringing “the viewer unusually close to the event.”155 Stories of Turner going to sea in order to have aesthetic experiences there seem to be fiction, and in some cases perpetrated by the artist himself. In comparing himself to Ulysses he pretended “to have been tied to the mast in the violent snowstorm of his painting” and so “presenting himself as the modern Ulysses, the great traveler whose lifetime’s experience of the British and European landscape was an Odyssey second to none.”156 He found the personal descriptions of the American whaling captain, Elisha Ely Morgan, enriching and instructive of voyages beyond his experience. As Brendan interacted with Barinthus’ description of his voyage to the island of God’s paradise, the call and response, so Turner may have had an aesthetic experience from Captain Morgan’s speech. Turner was also influenced by Dutch-inspired sea paintings.157 But Turner does not simply describe seascapes and shipwrecks prosaically, a documentation of some event visually. His paintings “stand out from other documentary depictions of shipwrecks.”158 Turner’s paintings give us poetic portrayals. RichterMusso writes that “although Turner derived the process of creation and dissolution from the dynamic relationship between elements observable in nature, they were given a life of their own in the act of artistic creation.”159 Turner’s poetic paintings, his responses to the calls of direct observation of the mirror play of elements, are a kind of return. Rather than having ascended Plato’s ladder in order to contemplate beauty in its pure form, Turner has come back to the first rung. Some of the paintings of the Dutch artist, M. C. Escher, depict such a return. After climbing the stair from the first step, beauty discovered in one particular body, the pilgrim arrives at a landing of the beautiful soul, then, climbing to the top to encounter the form, the pilgrim arrives back at the first step, discovering that beauty cannot be abstracted. Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological description of the mirror play of the fourfold also discloses the interplay of the elements

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and illuminates Turner’s discovery of beauty therein, so masterfully communicated in pigment on canvas. In Heidegger’s essay, “The Thing,” he shows the fourfold unconcealed through the event where in the gift of pouring out wine and water from a jug happens. He writes, “In the gift of the outpouring, mortals and divinities each dwell in their different ways. Earth and sky dwell in the gift of the outpouring. . . . earth and sky, divinities and mortals dwell together all at once.”160 Earth and sky, divinities and mortals are the fourfold that “are enfolded into a single fourfold.”161 Each one is united with the other three in their manifestation. Heidegger writes, “each of the four mirrors in its own way the presence of the others.”162 Turner’s paintings show this mirroring as the elements unite with each other and yet remain unique. In both paintings, Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore c. 1835 and Waves Breaking against the Wind c. 1835, the sky, sea, and shore mirror each other and yet remain distinguishable. The wind-blown sea rises into the atmosphere and is shredded, some of the water battered into mist and mingling with storm clouds. In this mirroring Turner communicates the play of the elements. Heidegger writes, “Mirroring in the appropriating-lighting way, each of the four plays to each of the others.”163 Light is sometimes diffused in mist and sometimes dampened by thick, dark clouds. When the light of the sun does illuminate, Turner paints the atmosphere in variations of gold. As already noted, some of Turner’s paintings reveal a “quasi-religious response to the grandeur of nature.”164 Heidegger writes, “The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead.”165 Our mortality is intertwined with the horizon of death. Death happens to all living beings, but mortals see the horizon of their own death. This horizon finds its way into Turner’s paintings. For example, Wreckers—Coast of Northumberland, with Steamboat Assisting a Ship Off Shore c. 1834, depicts the dangers of storms along the coast. Here a group waits on the shore to exploit and plunder wrecked ships, while, just out in the storm-tossed waves, a sailing vessel is being towed by a steamboat, attempting to rescue the endangered ship. Shipwrecks were a cause of death. Mortality, in the Heideggerian sense, presences itself in some of Turner’s paintings. Turner’s later paintings show the play where the elements and beauty mirror one another and reveal themselves as a whole, what the

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contemporaries of Turner would call Nature. Heidegger writes, “This appropriating mirror-play of the simple onefold of the earth and sky, divinities and mortals, we call the world. The world presences by worlding.”166 Turner’s later paintings are a return to the first step on the ladder of ascent. They presence the play of beauty, the elements, mortals, and spirit. The mirror play cannot be explained, but we sense it in these works of art. This “worlding” of the play of beauty, the elements, mortals, and spirit can also be understood as a wilderness, unfolding independent of human constituting. In this way, Turner, influenced by the charted ruminations of Burke’s inquiry, returns to a primal encounter with the wilderness of direct experience. He had been climbing the ladder, built by artists and philosophers, a schematization of beauty, a charted course in the world of aesthetics. But his travels in Northern England, the Alps, and Italy, along with a call from Burke, returns him to the mirror play that was always present at the first step. There he encountered the play of snow and storm on mountain slopes of the Alps, the brilliance of Italian light, and the interaction of weather and water on the undulating ocean. Like Rumi’s pilgrim who returns to Baghdad, or as phenomenologists return to the things themselves, Turner finds meaning in the primal encounter. MerleauPonty refers to phenomenological description as turning from conceptual practices in the natural attitude and returning to the things themselves, where they reveal themselves beyond our projection: “To turn back to the things themselves is to return to that world prior to knowledge of which knowledge speaks.”167 Tuner practiced a painting and drawing phenomenology and so opened himself to encounter, to the given of a primal encounter that precedes conceptualization. Laure Meyer writes, “the profundity of Turner’s art and his interpretation of atmosphere did not come to be appreciated fully until very much later [after 1870 when both Pissarro and Monet discovered Turner]. He alone remained the great visionary, who destroyed topographical form and heralded a nonfigurative art.”168 In this way Turner returns to “that world prior to knowledge,” the wilderness of an uncharted aesthetic, of which the charted knowledge of painters and philosophers who preceded had conceived.

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Conclusion We began this aesthetic journey at the foot of Plato’s ladder of ascent, where Eros the philosopher and pilgrim, called by the beauty of a singular body, responded by moving ever closer to the terminus, loving the Good and contemplating the beautiful itself. We also referenced an alternative to the ladder of ascent in a liturgy of return. Here Rumi’s pilgrim, after reaching what was believed to be the terminus, discovers that the real treasure is where the journey started. Brendan’s journey, initiated by a call in the form of beautiful speech, led him to cross an ocean wilderness to find the island of God’s paradise, the equivalent of Plato’s terminus. His journey involves both communion with God and with the beauty of God’s creation. The dangers experienced on the open sea only served to deepen that communion through God’s display of various mysteries. But he did not stay in this “paradise” contemplating the beautiful itself but returned to the origin of the initial call. His adventures across the uncharted sea and return home resulted in a written narrative, a response to the call. Teresa’s inward journey through the wilderness of her own soul also aimed at a kind of Platonic ideal, communion with her Divine Majesty, who is Good and Beauty. Her narrative, a response to the call of her God, manifest through conversation, sermons and reading, shows that the journey cannot be charted. Even though she uses the castle as a metaphor, a place with rooms, each seemingly closer to communion with God, she describes the journey more in terms of waiting on the manifestation of Beauty rather than a willful ascent. Even though her writings lead the reader through the interior of her soul, she reveals Beauty as transcendent, the Other who chooses the time and place of communion. Communion is received as a gift, not through self-effort. She even cautions the reader that her account may not even lead on the right path. Bernini’s elaboration on Teresa’s journey, chiseled in stone, builds upon a charted course. This is not the route Teresa has described, for that is unmarked—like Brendan’s ocean. Bernini’s artifact reflects his interaction with Teresa’s account, abstracting from it, and creating his own

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conception based on the abstraction. Clearly, Bernini received a call from Teresa’s work and responded with a beautiful sculpture. But Bernini’s sculpture functions like the idol that Marion describes, whereas Teresa presents us with an icon. Like Bernini, Brendan had also been called by another artist’s narrative account—that of Barinthus. Brendan’s response, his journey, took him another way. Bernini’s sculpture also diverged from Teresa’s description but not through a wilderness. Teresa portrays her union as both ephemeral and ineffable, truly happening in her interior wilderness. Her Other cannot appear in a theme but obsesses in its adjacency and proximity. Bernini’s beautiful installation is neither. Rather, his depiction shows Teresa’s ecstasy to be in stasis, clearly discernable, and the gallery of onlookers encase the event in the same way theater goers attend a drama. Turner seems to have begun his journey on an already established way, well-trodden by artists and philosophers who preceded him. But, he turned toward a direct encounter with mountains, oceans, color and light. In responding to the call of that turn, he returned to a vision of the mirroring of beauty and the elements. He returns to a primal encounter that precedes conceptualization and attempts to communicate its immediacy. His later years involved a response wherein he used pigment on canvas, trying to communicate his encounter, a communion with the mirror play of beauty and the elements.

Notes 1

Plato, The Repulbic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 514a-517a Plato, The Symposium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 210a-212c 3 (Plato, 204a) 4 (Plato, 204b) 5 (Plato, 204d) 6 (Plato, 206a) 7 (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “What is Phenomenology?” Cross Currents, 6 (2) (1956): 60. 8 (Merleau-Ponty, “What is Phenomenology?” 61) 9 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, 1893 10 Teresa, Interior Castle (London: Sheed and Ward, 1999) 11 Plato, The Symposium. 211c-d. 2

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Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9. Translated by Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1925), 210a-b website: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174 %3Atext%3DSym 13 JalƗl al-DƯn RnjmƯ. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks, A. J Arberry, and John Moyne. New expanded ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2004). 14 (RnjmƯ, 208) 15 (RnjmƯ, 209) 16 (RnjmƯ, 211) 17 Ernesto Grassi, “The Originary Quality of the Poetic and Rhetorical Word: Heidegger, Ungaretti, and Neruda.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 20 (4) (1987): 248. 18Owen Barfield, 1984. Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. 2. ed. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Pr., 1984), 144 19 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Richard Calverton Maccleary. Signs. Translated, with an Introduction, by Richard C. Mccleary. [Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.]. (Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1964), 44 20 (Merleau-Ponty, 44) 21 Richard L. Lanigan, “Merleau-Ponty, Semiology, and the New Rhetoric,” The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 40 (winter 1975): 138. 22 (Lanigan, “Merleau-Ponty, Semiology, and the New Rhetoric,” 140) 23 (Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, 144) 24 Emmanuel Lévinas and Seán Hand. The Levinas Reader (Blackwell Readers. Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell, 1989), 89. 25 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 89) 26 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 89) 27 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 90) 28 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 90) 29 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 90) 30 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 90) 31 Lewis, C. S. "Myth Became Fact." In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 65. 32 Daniel Boorstin, The creators (New York: Random House, 1992), 158. 33 (Boorstin, The creators, 158) 34 Jane Ellen Harrison. Ancient Art and Ritual (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 47. 35 (Harrison. Ancient Art and Ritual, 35) 36 (Harrison. Ancient Art and Ritual, 43) 37 (Harrison. Ancient Art and Ritual, 43)

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(Boorstin, The creators, 155) (Boorstin, The creators, 156) 40 (Boorstin, The creators, 156) 41 (Boorstin, The creators, 159) 42 (Boorstin, The creators, 159) 43 Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995). 44 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, 1893. Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” Brathair, 19 (1) (2019): 49. James Carney, “Review of Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis,” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): 42. 45 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” In The Classical Journal, Vol. 83, No. 4. (1988): 315. 46 Jonathan M. Wooding, “Introduction,” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): xvii. 47 Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” 38. 48 Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” 38. 49 Seamus Mac Mathuna, “Contributions to a Study of the Voyages of St Brendan and St Malo.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): 164. 50 Dorothy Ann Bray, “Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): 176. 51 William Flint Thrall, “Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama,” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): 16. 52 Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” 38. 53 Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” 40. 54 Elva Johnston, “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval,” 42. 55 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 316. 56 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 316. 57 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 320. 58 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 320. 39

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Plato, The Symposium. 211c-d. Dorothy Ann Bray, “Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” 182. 61 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 320. 62 John D. Anderson, “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller,” 321. 63 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, I 64 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, I 65 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, I 66 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, I 67 The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, (Harper Bibles, San Francisco, 1989). 68 Dorothy Ann Bray, “Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” 178. 69 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, VI 70 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XI 71 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XII 72 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XIII 73 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XXVI 74 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XXVIII 75 Moran, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, XXVIII 76 Teresa, Interior Castle London: Sheed and Ward, 1999). 26 77 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 26) 78 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 26) 79 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 26) 80 Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 15 81 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 14) 82 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 26) 83 (Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 108) 84 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 51) 85 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 51) 86 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 30) 87 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 51) 88 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 40) 89 (Grassi, “The Originary Quality of the Poetic and Rhetorical Word: Heidegger, Ungaretti, and Neruda,” 248). (Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, 144). (Merleau-Ponty, 44). (Lanigan, “Merleau-Ponty, Semiology, and the New Rhetoric,” 140). (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 89-90) 90 Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006), 116 91 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 29) 92 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 75-76) 60

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(Teresa, Interior Castle, 76) (The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, 6:1-5) 95 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 76) 96 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 77) 97 (Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9, 210a-b) 98 (Teresa, Interior Castle, 77) 99 C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins Publ., 1980), 42-43 100 Jean-Luc Marion, Thomas A Carlson, and David Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 2nd Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 9 101 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 10) 102 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 90) 103 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 91) 104 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 91) 105 (Lévinas, The Levinas Reader, 91) 106 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 12) 107 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 17) 108 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 17) 109 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 17) 110 (Marion, Carlson, and Tracy, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 19) 111 E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form, 4th ed. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, 1. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 108) 112 Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830, First ed. (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991), 597. 113 (Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 600) 114 E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art Sixteenth edition (revised expanded and redesigned) ed. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1995, 295) 115 Edmund Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the French Revolution; a Letter to a Noble Lord, Edited by Charles William Eliot. The Harvard Classics / Edited by Charles W. Eliot, V. 24. (New York: Collier, 1909). 116 Margorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. (Norton Library, N204. New York: Norton, 1963, 31) 117 (Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful, 35) 118 (Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful, 49) 119 (Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful, 43) 120 (Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful, 47) 121 (Burke, On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful, 48) 122 Ines Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, (Munich: Hirmer, 2011, 44). 94

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(Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 624) (Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 426) 125 (Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 626) 126 James Hamilton, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Manchester City Art Gallery, and Burrell Collection, Turner: The Late Seascapes, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003, 127 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 38) 128 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 59) 129 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 61) 130 Laure Meyer, Masters of English landscape: among others, Gainsborough, Stubbs, Turner, Constable, Whistler, Kokoschka (Paris: Terrail, 1993, 98) 131 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 102) 132 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 102) 133 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 104) 134 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 104) 135 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 104) 136 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 104) 137 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 48) 138 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 45) 139 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,”, Turner and the elements, 49) 140 ((Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,”, Turner and the elements, 49) 141 ((Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,”, Turner and the elements, 50) 142 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 42) 143 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 41) 144 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 31) 145 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 120-121) 146 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 31) 147 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 41) 148 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 41) 149 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 41) 150 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 41) 151 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 89) 152 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 43) 153 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 2) 154 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 43) 155 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 43) 156 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, (134) 157 (Hamilton, Clark, Turner: The Late Seascapes, 91-92) 158 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 43) 159 (Richter-Musso, “Fire, Water, Air and Earth,” Turner and the elements, 48) 124

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Heidegger, Martin. “The Thing.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. (New York: Perennial Library, 1971, 173. 161 (Heidegger, “The Thing,” 173) 162 (Heidegger, “The Thing,” 179) 163 (Heidegger, “The Thing,” 179) 164 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 104) 165 (Heidegger, “The Thing,” 179) 166 (Heidegger, “The Thing,” 179) 167 (Merleau-Ponty, “What is Phenomenology?” 60) 168 (Meyer, Masters of English landscape, 121)

Bibliography The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version 1989, Harper Bibles, San Francisco. Anderson, John D. “The Navigatio Brendani: A Medieval Best Seller.” In The Classical Journal. Vol. 83, No. 4. (1988): 315-322. Barfield, Owen. 1984. Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. 2. ed. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Pr. Boorstin, Daniel J. 1992. The creators. New York: Random House. Bray, Dorothy Ann. “Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 175-186. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Burke, Edmund. 1909. On Taste: On the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the French Revolution; a Letter to a Noble Lord. Edited by Charles William Eliot. The Harvard Classics / Edited by Charles W. Eliot, V. 24. New York: Collier. Carney, James. “Review of Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 42-51. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Charles-Edwards, Thomas. “The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 96-108. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

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Eco, Umberto. 1986. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gombrich, E. H. 1985. Norm and Form. 4th ed. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gombrich, E. H. 1995. The Story of Art Sixteenth edition (revised expanded and redesigned) ed. London: Phaidon Press Limited. Grassi, Ernesto. “The Originary Quality of the Poetic and Rhetorical Word: Heidegger, Ungaretti, and Neruda.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 20 (4) (1987): 248–60. Hamilton, James, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Manchester City Art Gallery, and Burrell Collection. 2003. Turner: The Late Seascapes. New Haven: Yale University Press. Harrison, Jane Ellen. 1969. Ancient Art and Ritual. New York: Greenwood Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. “The Thing.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Perennial Library. JalƗl al-DƯn RnjmƯ. 2004. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks, A. J Arberry, and John Moyne. New expanded ed. New York: HarperOne. Johnston, Elva. “The Voyage of St Brendan: Landscape and Paradise in Early Medieval.” Brathair. 19 (1) (2019): 35-51. Johnson, Paul. 1991. The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830 First ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Lanigan, Richard L, “Merleau-Ponty, Semiology, and the New Rhetoric,” The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 40 (winter 1975): 127141. Lévinas Emmanuel, and Hand Seán. 1989. The Levinas Reader. Blackwell Readers. Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell. Lewis, C.S. "Myth Became Fact." In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Edited by Walter Hooper, 63-67. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970). Lewis, C. S. 1980. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. New York: Harper Collins Publ. Mac Mathuna, Seamus. “Contributions to a Study of the Voyages of St Brendan and St Malo.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish

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Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 157-174. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1998. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Marion, Jean-Luc, Thomas A Carlson, and David Tracy. 2012. God Without Being: Hors-Texte, 2nd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meyer, Laure. 1993. Masters of English landscape: among others, Gainsborough, Stubbs, Turner, Constable, Whistler, Kokoschka. Paris: Terrail. McGinn, Bernard. 2006. The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism. New York: Modern Library. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Richard Calverton Maccleary. 1964. Signs. Translated, with an Introduction, by Richard C. Mccleary. [Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.]. Northwestern University Press: Evanston. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and John F Bannan. “What Is Phenomenology?” Crosscurrents 6 (1) (1956): 59–70. Meyer, Laure. 1993. Masters of English landscape: among others, Gainsborough, Stubbs, Turner, Constable, Whistler, Kokoschka. Paris: Terrail. Moran, P. F. 1893. Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. Trans. by Denis O’Donoghue. D. O’Donoghue, Brendaniana. Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. 1963. Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. Norton Library, N204. New York: Norton. O’Meara, J. J. “In the Wake of the Saint: The Brendan Voyage, an Epic Crossing of the Atlantic by Leather Boat.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 109-112. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Plato. 1991. The Symposium. Translated by Reginald E Allen. Dialogues of Plato, V. 2. New Haven: Yale University Press. Plato, and Reginald E Allen. 2008. The Republic. Dialogues of Plato. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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Plato. 1925. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. website: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A19 99.01.0174%3Atext%3DSym. Richter-Musso, Ines. 2011. “Fire, Water, Air and Earth.” Turner and the elements. 41-51. Munich: Hirmer. Teresa 1999. Interior Castle. London: Sheed and Ward. Thrall, William Flint. “Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, 15-21. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Tolstoy, Leo. 1995. What Is Art? Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books. Wooding, Jonathan M. “Introduction.” In The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: an Anthology of Criticism, edited by Jonathan M. Wooding, xi-xxviii. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

CHAPTER THREE THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE DONALD KUSPIT Aesthetic experience is usually understood as the result of an appreciative perception of or serious engagement with an extraordinary work of art, whatever the mode of art, although the philosopher John Dewey argues that it can occur in response to any ordinary object, more broadly, anything in nature or society. He describes it as “a distinctive kind of experiential condensation within the general stream of experience,” more particularly “experience in its integrity,” suggesting that it is what the psychologist Abraham Maslow has called a “peak experience,” an altered state of consciousness characterized by euphoria, occurring when an individual is in harmony with the environment, and with that himself or herself. It is a holistic experience, a conflict-free experience, an experience in which subject and object seem to merge, converge to the extent of seeming inseparable, even one and the same, the subject so completely identified with the object that it experiences the object as an extension or attribute of itself. The external object becomes what psychoanalysts call an internal object, a good one because it is aesthetically satisfying. It is what religious thinkers call “introvertive mysticism,” an experience in which the ego of the true believer becomes imaginatively one with the superego that is God, and with that has a sense of being at peace with himself or herself and with the world as a whole, experienced as a creation of God, an allgood object, and therefore an ideal object. I think that Dewey is wrong in arguing that any object can afford an aesthetic experience—an aesthetic epiphany, as it has been called. It has to be a work of art, an extraordinary object calling special attention to itself

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rather than an ordinary object in the everyday world—an object made to be contemplated, as philosophers say, rather than to be used. A work of art has no everyday purpose however accurately it may represent an everyday object, to refer to Plato’s and Aristotle’s theory of art as mimesis. But to imitate, or as I would say memorialize, a perceived object by meticulously describing it is to transcend it, without denying its objectivity—its givenness. Similarly, to memorialize the material medium by dramatizing it, as so-called non-objective art does, is to transcend it, without denying its materiality—its givenness. Making whatever it represents or presents transcendentally resonant is to give it aesthetic presence, and with that announce that it exists in a mental world apart, whatever it may physically be. More pointedly, it has to seem perfect in itself to be experientially convincing, offer the perfection that doesn’t exist in the imperfect world to make aesthetic sense. And when it does, when we experience it as an oddly transcendental aesthetic phenomenon, it changes our lives, to refer to the last line of Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” a “torso suffused with brilliance from inside,” the revelatory brilliance that a perfect work of art has when it is experienced aesthetically. Aesthetic experience of perfection enables us to emotionally endure and cognitively transcend everyday experience of the world’s imperfection. It is a profound change of attitude, even of Weltanschauung, catalyzed by the aesthetic experience of perfection, a self-transformation spontaneously generated by the intuitive recognition of artistically realized perfection. I dare say, to use the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s distinction, it lifts one out of the false selfhood of everyday experience into the true selfhood of lived experience. Aesthetically experienced the perfect art object stands out of the general stream of mundane experience, be it social experience or experience of nature, replacing them with an ideal experience, that is, an experience that transcends both. Transcendental experience—of which aesthetic experience, that is, the experience of beauty and sublimity, analyzed by Kant, and the varieties of religious experience, analyzed by William James, are the prime examples—is a sort of saving grace in a graceless world. One can have what seems a “peak experience” with LSD or peyote or any other psychedelic drug, but the “high” it affords tends to end in the “low” of

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paranoia, which is hardly a conflict-free experience, certainly not an integrative experience. I am arguing that an authentic aesthetic experience— an aesthetic experience with a positive effect on life—is possible only by identifying with a work of art experienced as ideal or perfect and with that eternally present—sufficient unto itself, a sort of thing in itself. When the work of art is perfect, and with that experienced aesthetically, it has a therapeutic effect, which is what a peak experience is; otherwise it is unconsciously experienced as a sort of memento mori, and with that fraught with death anxiety. Art making was once a sacred practice—a spiritual “profession” rather than a mundane activity. More pointedly, it was once a way of turning the profane into the sacred, the natural into the supernatural, the banal into the transcendental. To do so the artist had to be inspired and inventive—an ingenious idealist—like the legendary classical painter Apelles. Unable to find any mortal woman with a body beautiful enough to serve as a model for the immortal Aphrodite, he looked at a variety of female bodies, finding good enough parts—more or less fine-looking arms on one woman’s body, more or less lovely legs on another woman’s body, a more or less alluring torso on a third woman’s body, a more or less attractive face on a fourth woman’s body—and put them all together to create a picture of the goddess of love, her body perfectly beautiful, that is, ideal, and immortal, that is, transcendental, by definition. Using a variety of parts from a number of natural bodies, Apelles created a supernatural body, an ideal figure—an unreal figure made of parts from real figures, parts that seemed good enough however imperfect to be used to construct a perfect figure. Such a flawless transcendental figure is aesthetically arousing, experienced as an aesthetic phenomenon, a sort of aesthetic thing-in-itself, and with that peculiarly sacred. Such a work of art is emotionally resonant—dare one say lovable—because it invites us to worship the goddess of love, and intellectually engaging, because it seems so flawlessly—miraculously—constructed. It is doubly perfect: a perfect work of art and a perfect depiction of a perfect being. It gives perfection presence—or at least makes it seem possible. The great sculptor Pygmalion did something similar to what Apelles’ painting did: “with wonderful skill he made a statue of ivory so beautiful

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that no living woman came anywhere near it. It was the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive….His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the workmanship of nature.” Similarly, the sculptor Praxiteles, “the first to sculp the nude female figure in a life-size statue,” used the beautiful Phryne as his model for a sculpture of the nude Aphrodite for the temple of Knidos. Statues of Aphrodite— Pygmalion’s ivory statue was implicitly one, ivory, being a symbol of purity, conveys the purity of the goddess, and her immortality, for ivory is virtually eternal, certainly a harder substance than marble, the material Praxiteles used to make his immortal goddess—were meant to be worshipped in sacred spaces. They were regarded not simply as effigies of her, but informed by her living presence. Aphrodite epitomizes “the eternal feminine that draws us on,” to use Goethe’s famous phrase. She draws the classical artists on, hoping she will inspire them to make art as eternal as she is, as beautiful as her body. Albrecht Dürer, known in his time as the German Apelles, was, like the Greek Apelles, concerned to reconcile the ideal and the real. He was more of an empiricist than Apelles, for he made “empirical observations of ‘two to three hundred living persons’,” and more of a theorist than Apelles, for he used them to construct a perfectly proportioned body based on Vitruvius’ concept of the ideal figure. Moreover, Dürer ingeniously reconciled the empirically real and the theoretically ideal using what he called a “selective inward synthesis,” in sharp contrast to Apelles’ more superficial “selective outward synthesis.” The classical ancient artists Apelles, Pygmalion, and Praxiteles and the Renaissance artist Dürer—as well as other Renaissance artists, whether Italian or German, whose art is informed by classical idealism—use a number of different natural bodies to create a singular supernatural body, a body that doesn’t exist in nature but looks natural. In a creative act of devotion, they cannily created an ideal—unrealistic—body out of real—naturally given—parts. It is a lifelike body that only can live in artistic heaven. It is no accident that Venus, the beautiful goddess of love, is the major object of their creative attention, for their worship of her carries with it the wish that their art be as beautiful and worshipped as she is—that it also stand outside of time, or at least survive the test of time, and with that become eternally present,

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and they be worshipped, certainly idolized, as she is—thus the notion of the “divine artist.” Like Keats’ Grecian Urn, the Grecian sculptures show that beauty and truth are inseparable—that “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” as Keats writes. More particularly, they show what Nietzsche called the “beauty of ‘illusion’,” that is, the ideality of art. The question arises: why do I need to know that beauty is truth, truth is beauty? What good does it do me when I have to live in a bad world? Why do I have to care about a beautiful illusion when I have to deal with ugly reality? Isn’t the truth ugly rather than beautiful? We live “in the midst of woe,” and “old age will waste” us, as Keats writes, that is, we will suffer and die. So what’s the point of a beautiful illusion apart from the transient pleasure it can give me? I suggest that the aesthetic experience a beautiful illusion affords—by way of the illusion of perfection the artist has ingeniously created (for only an artist who can create an illusion of perfection is a genius)—is what phenomenological philosophers call an “epoché.” And I suggest that the artist must him or herself perform an epoché on his or her subject matter, that is, reduce it to a phenomenon and with that transcendentalize it, to make a perfect work of art or, if one wishes, a work of art that seems natural and ideal at once. As John Cogan writes in The Phenomenological Reduction, “we live our lives in terms of what Husserl calls a ‘captivation in acceptedness,’ that is to say, we live our lives in an unquestioning sort of way by being wholly taken up in the unbroken belief-performance of our customary life in the world….The epoché is a procedure by which we no longer accept it….The epoché is the name for whatever method we use to free ourselves from the captivity.…The most important point to be made in reference to the phenomenological reduction is that it is a meditative technique.” As Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes, “phenomenology is a transcendental philosophy which places in abeyance the assertions arising out of the natural attitude, but it is also a philosophy for which the world is ‘already there’.” But why free ourselves from captivity in acceptedness, place in abeyance the lifeworld that is already there, replacing it with an artworld, meditate on works of art rather than make the best of our lives in the everyday world? Can having an aesthetic experience or epoché induced by

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meditating on a work of art make our lives seriously better? Epoché is an ancient Greek term for “cessation.” It came to mean, in the words of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, “a state of the intellect in which we neither affirm nor deny anything” in order to induce a state of ataraxia, freedom from worry and anxiety. More broadly, the Stoics used it “to describe the withholding of assent to Phantasia (impressions),” and for the Stoic Epictetus it meant to withhold assent to feeling, in effect suspending belief in it—transcending it without denying its reality, accepting the fact that it naturally occurs. Ataraxia is not the “peculiarly mild intoxicating quality of feeling” that Freud said “the enjoyment of beauty affords,” adding that there is no “obvious use” or “cultural necessity” for it, but it offers more than the “little protection against the threat of suffering” with which Freud dismissed it, for it affords a great deal of protection from suffering if one aesthetically experiences it. It is why “civilization could not do without it,” as Freud said. “Beauty is derived from the field of sexual feeling,” as he said, but it was not sexual feeling that motivated the classical artists to imagine Aphrodite’s beautiful body—a perfect ideal body rather than an imperfect real body—but spiritual ambition. It is in the service of religion, worshipped because it is sacred rather than desired because it is profane, for its refined beauty affords what Cogan calls an “experience of astonishment” or what Merleau-Ponty calls “wonder” rather than raw lust. Performing an epoché—meditation (or contemplation)— is not merely an intellectual exercise, but a therapeutic procedure, for it frees us from suffering, or gives us a perspective on—or what the aesthetician Edward Bullough called psychic distance or detachment from—suffering, more particularly from woe, as Keats said, which along with “old age will waste us” emotionally as well as physically until we die. To be free from worry and death anxiety—and, I would add, emotional folly, attachment to what psychoanalysts call bad, hateful objects, external as well as internal—is no small gain for life, which is why “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” the opening line of Keats’ Endymion. Or, to say it another way, an aesthetic experience of artistic perfection is an antidote to the poisonous sickness unto death that Kierkegaard called despair, bringing with it a sense that life is meaningless. Dare one say that the beautiful artistic illusion gives one the illusion that life is meaningful, if not as perfect as the artistic illusion?

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One might add that the classical artist essentializes, that is, conveys what Husserl calls the “essential necessity,” “essential universality,” “essential truthfulness” of an object, and with that idealizes it. Its appearance becomes its essence. In contrast, the romantic artist existentializes, that is, subjectifies an object, or, if one wants, uses it as a springboard for selfexpression, and with that tends to distort its appearance until it becomes almost unrecognizable. As the psychoanalyst Michael Balint writes in “The Dissolution of Object Representation in Modern Art,” the romantic artist “degrades the dignity of the object into that of a mere stimulus,” a means of conveying “the artist’s subjective mental processes,” that is, his feelings, romanticism being a “mode of feeling,” as Baudelaire wrote,” rather than concerned with “exact truth,” that is, objective truth, as realism is. Romanticism is concerned with what psychoanalysts call internal reality at the expense of external reality. Avant-garde art is romantic to the core, as Kandinsky makes clear when he writes, echoing Baudelaire, “the only judge, guide, and arbitrator should be one’s feelings”—the feelings of the spectator as well as the artist. The romantic avant-garde artist is opposed not only to realism, with its insistence on the hard facts, and the triumph of consciousness over unconscious, empirical precision rather than fantastic expression, but to classicism, that is, idealism. There is “the necessity to put an end to idealism,” André Breton, the exponent of Surrealism, writes. In a similar vein, Pablo Picasso declared that “the beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies.” Echoing them, with greater destructive zeal, the abstract artist Barnett Newman declared that “the impulse of modern art was this desire to destroy beauty.” This brings to mind the philosopher and critic William Gass’ remark that “in a world which does not provide beauty for its own sake, but where the loveliness of flowers, landscapes, faces, trees, and sky are adventitious and accidental, it is the artist’s task to add to the world’s objects and ideas those delineations, carvings, tales, fables, and symphonic spells which ought to be there, to make things whose end is contemplation and appreciation; to give birth to beings whose qualities harm no one, yet reward even the most casual notice, and which therefore deserve to become the focus of a truly disinterested affection.” I am arguing that classical art, more than romantic art or realistic art, arouses truly disinterested affection, as the ideal that is beauty always does.

CHAPTER FOUR BEAUTIFYING FRIENDSHIP JOHN MURUNGI

Dancer at the Indian Market © Courtesy of Santa Fe Indian Market

It may readily be admitted that the above image of a Dancer at the Indian Market is a work of art. It has aesthetic value. If this is conceded, it may not be so readily conceded that, like this image, friendship has artistic and aesthetic value. For some readers, bringing aesthetics to bear on friendship or vice versa, may come across as nothing more than misleading juxtaposition. However, thinking of it this way may rest on a misunderstanding of what aesthetics is and what friendship is. What is needed is a radical rethinking of what aesthetics is or what friendship is.

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Such rethinking may clarify how each stands in relation to the other. What follows is an illustration of such thinking. Both aesthetics and friendship are essentially extraordinary and may harbor uncharted features, features that are essential to what they are. How each bears on the other cannot truly be determined until the concept of each is clarified. It is also important to keep in view that the conceptualization of either may be violative of what each is, for it is not self-evident that either is subject to conceptualization. To conceptualize is to create boundaries and when applied to what is not subject to boundarization is to subvert its essence. Boundarying may be understood as chartering, and this implies that the unboundarized is uncharted. If provisionary, friendship is understood to fall within the boundaries of aesthetics and vice versa; what applies to aesthetics applies to it. Unchartedness, too, belongs to the essence of friendship. Elemental experience of friendship has an artistic and aesthetic sense, a sense that is not obvious, just as what is elemental about the experienced of friendship is not obvious. What follows is an attempt to explore and imagine the reciprocal presence of aesthetics and friendship. In conventional wisdom, discourse on beauty falls partly within the province of aesthetics. To my knowledge, this province has no place for the discourse on friendship. Accordingly, linking the two discourses is likely to appear anomalous. This appearance that conventional wisdom is precisely what it is—conventional wisdom—is a worthy reminder. There is a broader sense of wisdom that has a place for unconventional wisdom, a place where beauty and friendship have an elemental link. Beautiful friendship is not an oxymoron. Here, beauty and friendship illuminate each other, thereby shedding light on each other. One of the sites where this reciprocal illumination took place for me was during a journey I took in the western part of the United States. I flew to Denver, Colorado. From Denver, I took a train to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. From Glenwood Springs I traveled by road to Durango, Colorado. On the way to Durango, I passed by some memorable landscapes and by some small old towns. After spending a night Durango, I rented a jeep and bought myself a pair of jeans, a pair of huarache shoes,

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and a jean jacket. I also bought a sleeping bag because I wanted to skip staying in hotels or in motels. I had taken with me very few belongings. I wanted to travel light. “When one travels light the world becomes more accessible,” so says world travelers. Beauty is light. Friendship is light. The link between the two is light. Beautifying friendship is light. Everything is light. My destination was the Four Corners, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah states intersect. I have a deep craving for intersections and wanted to have an experience of being endless intersected. The Spirit of the Navajos animated this particular intersection. It is the kind of Spirit by which I, too, wanted to be animated and wanted to evoke. If this Spirit attracted me, it is primarily because, already, it had an echo in my life. In a sense, I was going from home and coming home. I was at home away from home. After spending a couple of days camping around the Four Corners area, I left and returned home, a return that was not a return since, in an elemental sense, I never left home. The paradoxical journey I had undertaken informed my reflection on beautifying friendship. What this journey has to do with beautifying friendship may not be obvious but, in the course of reflection, what is not obvious may turn out to have deep significance to what is at stake in beautifying friendship. The reflection is animated by the above image of the Indigenous Native American dancer. Calling it an image is indeed a misnomer. It is a work of art and, as such, it is not an image. It expresses a way of seeing the world as a key to leading a life that is charged by this seeing. It, too, is a site for beautifying friendship. Beautifying friendship is ultimately artsy. How it is such a site and artsy animates what I say about friendship. A work of art has much to teach us about friendship, about beauty, and about beautifying friendship. To the extent that friendship and beauty are understood as playing an essential role in constituting and disclosing who and what we are, it is, ultimately, about anthropology, not anthropology as an academic discipline, but anthropology in the sense of exhibiting who and what we are as human beings. It is an archaeology of the work of art. As a work of art, the Navajo dancer portrayed above, is a dancer of our

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being. He takes us where friendship and beauty ought to take us. Normally, this is not where friendship or beauty is expected to take us. However, when either is placed in the context of a work or art, we are reminded that a genuine work of art is a work of our being. In it, our being works out itself. It constitutes and expresses who and what we are, and what we ought to be. Falling in Love with Wisdom, an interesting book by David Karnos, opens with an epigram about friendship. Karnos says of friendship that it consists of ‘a single soul dwelling in two bodies. 1 After coming across this observation on friendship, I was set on a meditative journey about the beauty of friendship. I did so under the assumption that friendship deserves closer attention. It is often poorly and superficially attended. The journey to the Four Corners could have prematurely ended if an inquiry into this assumption had not taken place. Not wanting such a journey to end prematurely, I decided to examine this assumption more deeply. In doing so, I have been led to inquiring about the nature of friendship and the question of what constitutes beauty. Only after such an inquiry, would it make sense to link beauty and friendship elementally. Moreover, it has become increasingly evident to me that the examiner cannot ultimately conduct the inquiry without examining himself or herself. In the context of a work of art, one cannot be an outsider to what one examines. One is implicated in both friendship and in beauty. It is only when one is friendly to friendship and when one is friendly to beauty that one can be open to an insightful examination of the link between the two. One must dwell in this openness for the opening up of either and for the opening up of the link between the two. One must be open to this opening in order to witness what avails itself. In Plato’s Symposium, we are reminded that wisdom is beautiful. I am not an initiator of the discussion on either friendship or beauty, and neither can anyone make such a claim. The discussion on friendship has attracted thinkers from time immemorial. Aristotle, a major ancient Greek philosopher, correctly points out that, … without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all the other goods: even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating

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He may not be entirely correct in taking this position for, indeed, there may be some people who would choose to live without friends regardless of how difficult such a life would be. Some people live without friends, not by choice, but because they have failed in their search for a friend. Betrayal by a friend or by friends may lead one to give up on friendship. For some people, living, even without friends, is valuable in itself. Even so, what Aristotle says is true for most of us. Although it will not readily be admitted, many of us are strangers to genuine friendship. Many of us do not have a clue about what such friendship is. We mistake it for what it is not. Let us assume that, for many of us, seeking friendship and being recognized as a friend by others is a part of human nature. If this is indeed the case, an inquiry into the nature of friendship takes us inescapably to an inquiry into the nature of being human, into the nature of who or what we are. Accordingly, to ask what friendship is, is to ask what it is to be the kind of being that we are. Whether one asks or does not ask what it is to be a human being, friendship expresses what a human being is. To my knowledge, it is only human beings to whom friendship initially applies. It is indeed true that some of us believe that there are others to whom we can extend friendship and some of them apparently reciprocate. Even so, provisionally, I will limit my discussion to human-to-human friendship. I provisionally leave out the possibility that friendship can incorporate the extra-human. It may be obvious that seeking friendship is a part of our nature, but it is not obvious that many of us understand what is at stake in seeking it. It appears to be a biological urge. For many of us, seeking friendship does not necessarily lead to the search for an understanding of what or who we are. Normally, what friendship is, is taken for granted and so is who or what we are. Those who genuinely care about what friendship is and about the connection it has with who or what we are, are few, but the few are

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worth listening to. Of course, not everything that is worth listening to is indeed listened to. The truthfulness of Karnos’ quoted epigram ‘friendship consists of a single soul dwelling in two bodies’ is not fully intelligible if one does not know what friendship is. Without such knowledge one cannot determine where or how friendship dwells. What, then, is friendship? How does it dwell where it dwells? There is a widespread conventional belief that what friendship is, is in the eye of the beholder. We generally and almost instinctively believe that what friendship is is in the eye of the beholder. Disagreeing with this belief is equally likely to be in the eye of those who disagree. These conventional beliefs are debate stoppers. It is pointless to argue with those who hold on to them. But if, as indicated earlier, an inquiry into friendship ultimately leads to an inquiry into what it is to be a human being, should one conclude that what it is to be a human being is equally in the eye of the beholder? Would a disagreement about what it is to be a human being between two human beings make sense? Wouldn’t a meaningful disagreement contradict the belief that what a human being is, is in the eyes of the beholder? Can one disagree with a rock? Provisionally, let us set the apparent conventional positions on what friendship is and later turn to beauty as far as it is linked to friendship. An understanding of friendship’s link to beauty depends on how friendship is understood and on how beauty is understood. What is conventionally said about the nature of friendship appears to apply to what is conventionally said about the nature of beauty. There appears to be a longstanding and widely held belief that what beauty is, is in the eyes of the beholder. Like an inquiry into the nature of friendship, an inquiry into the nature of beauty necessarily leads to an inquiry into the nature of being human. Perhaps, to our knowledge, this conclusion rests on the belief that beauty pertains exclusively to human beings in the sense that it is only human beings who seek beauty or who profess to be beautiful, or who want to be beautiful. Moreover, when beauty is linked to friendship, an inquiry into what this link signifies is likely to lead to the belief that how friendship and beauty are linked is in the eyes of the beholder. Again,

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as said about friendship previously, disagreement ends up being problematic for it is not evident how disagreement could be ended other than admitting or agreeing that the disagreement cannot be overcome. Since the beholder appears to play a necessary role in determining what friendship is, what beauty is, and about the nature of the link they have with each other, what the beholder is should not be taken for granted. How one understands the beholder may prejudice what one understands about friendship, about what one understands about beauty, and about how one understands the link they have with each other. Given the longstanding and widespread debate on what beauty is and on what friendship is, what I say is unlikely to end either this debate or the debate on the link between the two. I see no end to these debates. Accordingly, the meditative journey I am embarking on is not intended to bring the debate to an end. What I say is provisional. I do not want to give the wrong impression that what I say about beauty, friendship, or about the link between the two is other than incidental. However, I believe that this should not prevent us from pursuing the possibility that there may be more than incidentality. I concede that what is more is subject to thinking and understanding that is beyond conventional wisdom. What lies beyond is a matter of philosophy. By philosophy, I do not have in mind what scholars do or what academicians do. Philosophy is more than scholarship, more than an academic activity. Scholarship and academic activities are likely to do violence on friendship, on beauty, and on the relation the two have with each other. They are also likely to do injury to philosophy. At most, they can only take us to a liminal space where each meets its demise and where a lived-environment emerges. This environment overwhelms and cannot fully be re-presented. What overwhelms defies re-presentation. It is the home beautiful friendship and a home for those who share this friendship. The presence of the overwhelming is illustrated by a long-standing incantation in Native American traditional life in which the following is said about beauty: I walk in Beauty… In the house of long life, there I wander. In the house of happiness, there I wander.

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Beauty before me, Beauty behind me, Beauty above me, Beauty below me, Beauty all around me, In old age traveling, with it I wander. On the beautiful trail I am, with it I wander. In beauty, it is begun, In beauty, it is finished.

What stands out for me in this incantation is the spatiality of beauty, the magical spell of beauty. There is nowhere where beauty is not. Accordingly, the ‘I’ and the ‘me,’ that is the self is not exempt from the reach of beauty. If one can speak about the circumference of beauty, one cannot position oneself outside this circumference. It cannot be an object of one’s perception or of one’s conception. Indeed, as one chants this ‘prayer’ one is absolved in and by the chant. One becomes one with it. One becomes beautiful. One wanders in it beautifully. Beauty is not outside oneself, and it is not within oneself. The outside and inside become one and one becomes all. The inside-outside binary is annihilated. The space of beauty ceases to be a matter of empirical space and ones ceases to be an empirical self. There is no before me, behind me, above me, below me, or all around me. Self is absorbed by and in beauty. One cannot perceive beauty, think about beauty, speak about beauty, as if it were an object facing the self. The chant drives this home. The ordinary is rendered extra-ordinary. There arises the possibility of an ecstatic experience, an experience that is difficult to think about or to speak about. Here thinking gives way to non-thinking and speaking gives way to non-speaking, to silence. In the chant, one is mysteriously engulfed. What is being described here is beyond description. It should be evident how inadequate and improper it is to think of a beholder of beauty as an isolated person or as a subject cut off from beauty. In the presence of beauty, the beholder ceases to have beauty as an object whose opinion could be different or in opposition to another beholder of beauty. Difference and opposition are effaced. The beholder is one with the beheld. The beholding itself vanishes. There is no beholder, for the beholder and the beheld both dissolve in this orgiastic experience.

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When friendship is linked to beauty, what is said about beauty applies to what is said about friendship. Friendship takes on the spatiality of beauty, a spatiality that overwhelms. Friendship is everywhere. There is nowhere where it is not. It is beyond circumscription since circumscription leaves out space outside the circumscribed. One who is taken by and in friendship loses his or her autonomous standing. One merges with the common environment of friendship and beauty and becomes one with it. We are in an unre-presentable environment. As we get closer to friendship, or as friendship gets closer to us, it increasingly becomes obvious that the distance from friendship, whether near or far, increasingly ceases to exist. We become friendship or friendship becomes us. We experience the limits of what can be said or thought about friendship or what can be said and thought about us. Equally, we experience what can be thought about it or said about our relationship with it since the relationship vanishes. The relation loses its relationality. We are overwhelmed by friendship, though such overwhelming is not experienced as such since there is no one for whom it is overwhelming. Friendship becomes beautiful and beauty becomes friendly. What is being said above defies what is normally understood as normal conception of friendship. In friendship, one is a friend of another: two individuals stand in relation to each other as friends. I am you friend, and you are my friend. You are my friend, and I am your friend. In the normal way of thinking or speaking about friendship, there is presupposed my existence, which is other than the other’s existence, and the existence of the other which is other than my existence. In this way, we can enter a friendly relationship with each other. But isn’t there an existential occlusion that is operative here? Are we not in the presence of an experience that calls for an extraordinary spatiality, a spatiality that is akin to the spatiality of beauty as experienced in the Native American tradition? When we enter a friendly relation with each other, is there not a loss of otherness from either side? Am I here, and is the other there? Is there an opposition between here and there? If there is no opposition, how can one speak of a relation since a relation depends on the difference between a here and a there? Isn’t friendship overwhelming in the same way that beauty is overwhelming? Isn’t the overwhelming of beauty akin to the

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overwhelming of friendship? Can a truly friendly relation be other than a beautiful relation? Can beauty be other than friendship? Can friendship be other than beauty? Let us pursue more deeply and broadly how the here/there mode of being is experienced. We revisit the observation made by Karnos. If in friendship a single soul dwells in two bodies, in the light of what has been said about friendship, this dwelling must be more than what Karnos calls to our attention. It must be more than the ordinary understanding of friendship. In a friendly relationship the two souls are indistinct, as are the two bodies in which friendship dwells. The souls cease to be distinct given that by being distinct, friendship is necessarily pre-empted. In friendship, souls lose their distinctness, their singularities, and the two bodies they inhabit lose their apartness. Were they to be two, their distinctness would be preserved, and they would occupy various places as opposed to the one occupied by friendship. Friendship dwells in the plenitude of body-ness, where bodies lose their opaqueness and are absorbed by boundaryless openness. They open to each other and lose their singularities. The soul becomes borderless and dwells in the borderless-ness of the body. The bodies lose their distinctness. They become lived-oneness. The soul inhabits corporeality without limits. The inseparability of bodies allows for dwelling of the souls, which are themselves borderless. When it is said that the soul dwells in two bodies, the bodies are not to be understood as containers of the soul. It is inconceivable that one’s body is the container of one’s soul or that the other’s body is the container of his or her soul. Even Descartes would not suppose this. If the collective body were a container of souls, there would be no friendship. Each would be external to the other, and friendship would have no place, since it is the nature of friendship to cancel out any duality, any internal external relationship. The question may be raised as to whether one can have more than one friend, or whether the soul can dwell in more than two bodies. There are those who are inclined to say yes. However, they may not have considered deeply what is entailed by saying yes. Saying yes implies saying yes to borderless souls and to borderless bodies. What is entailed by borderless souls or by borderless bodies defies imagination. What lies beyond imagination cannot be imagined, but that does not deny its existence. What

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lies beyond imagination is determined by what is construed as the soul and the body. Where neither the soul nor the body is circumscribed, the answer is yes. Friendship, in its true nature, is not possessive, for there is no self that would take possession and there would be nothing to possess. Beautiful friendship is limitless. In beautiful friendship, beauty renders open-ended the body ‘in’ which the soul dwells. It is not limited by other bodies unless the other bodies are not possessed by friendship and by beauty. Beautiful friendship is rare. This recalls the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said of perfect friendship that it is rare and intermittently attained by a few: … perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good and alike in virtue, for these wishes well alike to each other qua good. And they are good in themselves. Good men will be friends for their own sake, i.e., in virtue of their goodness … Those then are friends without qualification, the others are friends incidentally and through a resemblance to these. 3

How do those in perfect friendship stand in relation to each other? According to Aristotle, they are alike in what matters fundamentally. But, given what he says, they are more than alike. They are each other. Their bodies are one body -a body endlessly infused with beauty. Aristotle did not pay attention to the place of the body in perfect friendship. For him, what matters fundamentally is not the pleasure that friends give to each other. Nor is it their usefulness to each other. They are good in themselves and enter a relationship as such. They are not parasitic to each other, for otherness no longer exists. Parasitism inhibits the rise of true friendship. It kills friendship. Where friendship is based on nothing more than attainment of pleasure or the advantage of usefulness, it falls short of true friendship. This does not imply that friends do not give pleasure to each other or that they are not useful to each other. Friendship incorporates these aspects, but what they are incorporated into is more than pleasure and more than usefulness. Indeed, friendship incorporates non-pleasure and the use-less. Many lose sight of this incorporation. It is assumed by many that this incorporation is an impediment to friendship. In the case of perfect friendship, let us revisit what Karnos’ epigram says. The observation that friendship consists of a single soul dwelling in two

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bodies, we might also ask: can two souls dwell not just in two bodies but also in more than two bodies? If by extension to what Aristotle says, the good in friends is identical, then their souls would lose their plurality, becoming one, dwelling as one in bodies that also lose their plurality, by becoming pluralistically one. The oneness of the souls and the oneness of the bodies become one without losing their pluralities. It is good and beautiful oneness. The friends that one can have are limitless and one’s body can be a site for limitless bodies. Any restriction marks imperfect friendship. It marks imperfect beauty. If it is absolutely beautiful, friendship is essentially open to those who are absolutely beautiful friends. If perfect friendship is unattainable, then, even those who pursue it ought to count as loyal friends. Such friends are few and, perhaps, are intermittently so. Dread keeps many of us away from this pursuit. Many of us are captives of imperfect friendship and we pay dearly for this captivity. In vain, we attempt to flee what it costs us when we resist the pursuit. What is resisted is none other than our selves. We are ‘afraid’ of what we are and, consequently, rest with what is less than what we are. Moreover, because we are our bodies, we experience our bodies as dread-full. Our bodies become the source of the dread we experience. To deal with this dread-full experience, we turn to psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, or to psychiatrists. Of course, there is a chance that one’s misery could be deepened by doing so if not guided by what one is attempting to free oneself from. If the psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist is of help, then they, themselves, must be counted as beautiful friends, as beautiful friendship is therapeutic. Those who lack beautiful friendship in themselves cannot correctly diagnose the absence of beautiful friendship or wisely prescribe what is needed to end its absence. From what Aristotle says, it appears that beautiful friendship ought to be good friendship. It may even be said that beautiful friendship is ultimately good friendship. However, regarding what is good about it, many are likely to disagree, or have different or conflicting answers. Normally, what is good about friendship is taken for granted under the assumption that if friendship is beautiful, it is ipso facto good. However, if we were to ask what it is that makes such a friendship good, the answer would likely be

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that what makes it good is in the eyes of the beholder. As indicated earlier, the expression ’in the eyes of the beholder’ is problematic if only because the notion of ‘beholder’ in this expression is inadequately thought out. This notion may be nothing more than a social construction lacking authenticity. There is also the possibility that what is taken as friendship is erroneously taken as such, and that what is taken as beautiful is likewise erroneously taken as such. A combination of the errors may give rise to an erroneous conception of beautiful friendship. In this case, attaching the word good to such conception gives rise to an erroneous attribution to beautiful friendship. It gives rise to what ought not to be attributed to it. When such attribution takes place, the good ends up not being good. It is precisely for this reason that one should not blindly assume that beautiful friendship is necessarily good. One should not assume that what is perceived as good is necessarily good. A blind assumption may end up being harmful when one discovers that one has been holding an erroneous perception of what is good. It happens often. Based on what has been said so far, it should be clear that the key to beautiful friendship is not firmly in our hands. It is and it is not in our hands. Beautiful friendship teases us and makes us teasers of ourselves. We are what we are by being what we are not. We are self-bewitching. As it has been said, Good friends are like stars. You do not always see them, but you know they are always there … —Old saying

Being there by not being there. Seeing without seeing. The fullness of the void. The void of the fullness. Joyous dreadfulness. Elemental rift valley that is neither a rift nor a valley. Extended non-extension. Going somewhere that is nowhere. Saying what cannot be said. Writing about what cannot be written about. Adventure in good, beautiful friendship. Stars, Stars, Oh Stars! Take me as your own, so that I, too, can shine. I may not know it, but I, too shine. Deep at heart, I am your kind.

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If good friends are like stars, knowledge of the stars can shed light on the goodness of friends. Stars emit light to what is lighted so that it can be seen. In doing so, they light themselves as they light what they light. If they are like good friends, good friends light up each other as good friends. How they light each other and how they light the goodness of their friendship is not self-evident. Again, using the stars and the lighting that they are (they are not apart from their lighting), they also light as stars of the sky. They also light in that they are stars of the earth. It is from the earth that they are stars of the sky. The earth that appears to be nothing more than what is lighted, paradoxically, lights too. It is a source of light. This is what is meant when it is said that the stars are the stars of the earth. The earth is more than a receptacle of light. The earth is the star of stars. It lights the stars so that stars can be stars. What is extraordinary, is that the space between the stars and the earth or between the sky and the earth is not empty. It is constitutive of the sky, the stars, and the earth. The space between lights itself as it lights the earth, the stars, and the sky. Space separates and unifies. It is indistinguishable from what it separates and what it unifies. Stars exhaust what they are in lighting and the earth exhausts what it is in earthing. Earthing is lighting. Exhaustion in either case, opens animated openness. This is the openness in which good, beautiful friends dwell. It is where good and beautiful friendship dwells. In good and beautiful friendship, friends ideally open to each other in both personal and non-personal ways. Animated by openness, the personal and the non-personal are both separate and not separate. There is no wall separating the two. In a society or in a culture where the personal is paramount, the profound experience of good, beautiful friendship is rare. For those who are not genuinely good and beautiful friends, the prospect of experiencing good and beautiful friendship is a source of breathtaking angst. It is like being deprived of oxygen. In and by emphasizing the personal in every feature of life, modern society becomes a major obstacle to good, beautiful friendship. It makes those who strive for such friendship appear in some way as unbalanced, perhaps, even as diehard enemies of friendship, or even as incorrigibly un- or anti-friendly. What is undeniable is that good, beautiful friendship is ecstatic. In an ecstatic experience, there is a loss of

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the everydayness of the self and an upsurge of an ecstatic self, a selfless self. Egocentricity is the archenemy of good and beautiful friendship. The Indigenous Native American dancer who appears at the beginning of what is being said here embodies the beauty of friendship. Dancing frees us. It releases us to each other, a releasement in which we are that engulfed in good, beautiful friendship. We dance with the dancer and the dancer dances with us. This dancing is extra-human. It is cosmic. In listening to me you have been listening to yourselves and I am listening to you as you listen to yourselves. In listening to ourselves, we listen to the cosmos -to the cosmic Spirit -the cosmic Spirit that is exemplified by the indigenous Native American dancer. We listen to the cosmos as it listens to us. The cosmos is beautifully friendly to us, and we are beautifully friendly to it. We are cosmic. What this claim entails is unfathomable. It is unimaginable. The cosmos has no definite borders, no identifiable borders. The borders we associate with it are nonsensical and inconceivable. They are beyond our imagination. This is embodied in the claim that we are cosmic. If this sounds or comes across as utopian, perhaps, there is what is utopian about us. Our bodies testify to this utopian mode of being. We are what we are by being out of reach. It is where beatifying friendship takes us. It is where the Navajo dancer and the Navajo dancing takes us. It is where we take ourselves to the extent that we let go of ourselves. When the dancer does this, he or she is more than an object of tourist observation. The dancer, in this case, is not to be observed. One dances with him or her. He or she invites us to participate in a cosmic dance. More accurately, the cosmos extends an invitation to us to participate in its dancing, which is at the same time our dancing. There is more than what is human in friendship. Friendship is humanistic and, at the same time, more than humanistic. It lifts the human beyond the human as a way of being human. This is equally true of beauty. The combination of the two generates pure ecstasy. Good, beautiful friendship is ecstatic. It is a genuinely Dionysian moment. It is an embodiment and expression of the Indigenous Native American Great Spirit. It is also the Spirit of our being. When I went to Navajo land I went home. All geography is the geography of my being, of our being.

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Our sense of friendship is impoverished when we think of “I” as an exclusively human phenomenon. It is both human and extra-human. As extra-human, it links us with what is other than human. It links us with the rest of nature. The beauty of the relationship with each other overflows us and encompasses the rest of what is. We are sensuous beings and as such there is elemental kinship with all sensuous beings. This beautiful landscape that is the object of my vision is the landscape of my being. It awakens in me the beauty of my being. It is the beautiful landscape of our being and the beautiful landscape of what is. Genuine painters, genuine photographers and, indeed, all artists portray and awaken this awareness in us.

Notes 1

David D. Karnos and Robert G. Shoemaker, Falling in Love with Wisdom, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 7 2 Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random House, 1941, p. 1058 3 Ibid., p. 1061

CHAPTER FIVE THE UNCHARTED WORLD OF AI ART: MUSIC AND AI BONGRAE SEOK Introduction: AI Art Today With the advancement of computer science and information technology, one can see AI systems in many areas of art and music. Ahmed Elgammal, for example, created an AI system AICAN (AI Creative Adversarial Network) as an autonomous AI artist and art collaborator. With its sophisticated algorithms, AICAN studies Michelangelo, Kandinsky, Warhol and other visual artists and learn to understand, process, and recreate the brushstrokes, color usage and depth of field. Elgammal states that “AICAN first began to understand aesthetics through exposure to a vast number of art representing the Western canon over five centuries. I designed AICAN so that it wouldn't emulate existing style. The goal here was to encourage an algorithmically novel and creative approach, grounded in art history.”1 He claims that AICAN passed the Turing test (a visual art version of the Turing test). Human subjects were not able to tell the difference between AICAN’s work and abstract expressionist and contemporary works by human artists from the Art Basel 2016.2 That is, AICAN’s works are as good or artistically convincing as those by human artists. With its amazing algorithm and artistic talent, AICAN actively builds its career. Its art works are featured in many exhibitions throughout the world (New York, LA, Frankfurt, and Miami). In addition, some AI systems can write essays, novels, and poems. A creative writing system GPT-2 (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer-2) is an AI writer who can write stories and novels. Google’s PoemPortraits can

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compose poems following the keywords entered by human users. The literary skills of these AI systems are supported by their learning algorithms developed from the extensive training on a huge set of data (i.e., masterpieces of well-known writers). They are good at creating sentences and stories that emulate the styles of the materials they are trained on through the powerful computational algorithms. Are these AI systems real artists or smart computers with some fancy functionalities? Do they create a new form of art, i.e., AI art? Or are they just mechanical and pre-programmed systems disguised and branded as creative systems? More important, do they build and explore an uncharted world of art or just settle in a simulated world of beauty? In this chapter, I will discuss and analyze AI systems for musical creativity to answer these questions. I will focus on whether AI systems can bring an unexplored world of music to us by expanding or enriching musical creativity. In this chapter, I define AI music as music generated by AI via its learning algorithms. It includes AI-generated or AI-enhanced, AI-aided or AIcollaborated music. I will discuss whether AI music brings in a new horizon of musical creativity. Can an AI system create new and stimulating works of music?

Practical Applications of AI Music: Music for Everyone Currently, many apps, programs, and online/cloud platforms use AI algorithms to create music and assist musicians for their projects. For example, AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Assistant by AIVA Technologies founded by Denis Shtefan, Pierre Barreau, Vincent Barreau in 2016), and Amper (by Amper Music founded by Drew Silverstein, Michael Hobe, Sam Estes in 2014) are AI based music composing systems that can create music in many different genres and styles with intuitive user interface. In its learning process, AIVA is trained on over 30,000 classical works of music by the world’s renowned composers. Its learning process extracts musical patterns and develops algorithmic rules that are used to create original pieces of music. Amper is a cloud-based AI system that is trained to compose music for movies and video games. By utilizing AI algorithms, it can compose music in variety of different tempo, instrumentation, rhythm, harmonics, and chord progressions. Online systems

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such as Zukedeck, Amadeus Code, and Ecrett Music provide similar services to help their users to create music for different moods, genres, and styles.3 Because of its flexible functions, diverse options, easy access and userfriendly interface, AI music serves and fulfills the needs of its users in the following areas of music. Music for videos, images, or video games, Music for activities (exercise, study, meditation, etc.), moods, or personal events (gatherings and parties), Music for sleep, concentration, depression, personal relations, etc., Musical soundscape for personal living spaces, and Music for different emotions and feelings (uplifting, comforting, chilling, etc.). By following simple instructions, the users of AI systems can compose music without professional knowledge and training in music or computer programming and, most of time, they can use the AI-generated or AIcollaborated music without licensing it from a recording production company, publisher, or commercial music library. The following is a nonexhaustive list of apps and programs that are developed to serve the diverse musical needs of the users. Alysia (by WaveAI) is a songwriting app that helps its users to create songs. Amadeus Code is a songwriting app that helps its users to create songs. A.I. Duet is a Google’s AI system that respond musically on the basis of its machine learning to your musical fragments. AIVA is an AI system and an online platform that helps its users to compose songs and soundtracks. Full AI composition of original music is possible in this platform.

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Amper (by Amper Music) is an online AI platform that helps its users to create license-free music for their videos, movies, and video games in different styles, rhythms and genres. Atlas (by Algonaut) is an AI program that helps users to create a perfect beat by organizing and utilizing users’ samples. Ecrett Music is a music creator for videos. It comes with an intuitive interface that helps its creators to compose music for their videos with different scenes, moods, and genres. Endel is an AI system that suggests and provides personalized music and soundscapes that are tailored to individual needs and physical contexts such as weather, heart rate, intensity of physical activity, circadian rhythm. Flow Machines, Flow Machine Professional (by Sony) is an AI system for augmented creativity (an AI-plugin for producing music). It can assist musicians to choose chords, melodies and basslines for their compositions and projects. HumOn, Humtap are songwriting and singing apps that draw its users to hum with their smartphones and create songs. Jukedeck is an AI program that creates royalty free music with diverse genres, styles, and emotions Magenta (by Google Brain Project) is an open-source music creator using machine learning models. MatchTune (formerly Muzeek) is an AI program that helps YouTube producers and creators to develop soundtracks that match the style, length and dramatic moments of a video clip. MuseNet (by OpenAI) helps users to create music in different instruments, styles, genres, sonic patterns, harmonies, and rhythms. Musico is an AI composer by an Italian software company. It helps its users to create copyright-free music in different genres and styles. It consists of Impro AI, Song, and Music Fit.

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ORB Composer is an AI that help users to create their own music in different categories and styles. Playbeat randomizes and expands, grooves by adjusting and modifying pitch, volume and other features of users’ sample. Rhythmiq (by Accusonus) helps its users to build diverse forms and variations of beats from original beats. Solaris Virtual Vocalist is an AI program for realistic vocal synthesizing. Computoser helps its users to create songs by manipulating different combinations of tones, rhythm, and instruments. Song Maker (Chrome Music Lab) provides an easy way to make and share a song by utilizing an intuitive interface.

AI as an Assistive and Collaborative Technology for Music Composition and Production Beyond the utilitarian functions and services of AI music, one can also use AI for serious musical creativity. AI can be used to compose and produce deeply creative, refreshingly original, or genuinely artistic music. It can be a good partner and collaborator for professional musicians and provide an expressive, thematic, and technical means to enrich their musical creativity. AI Muse: AI can inspire musicians to find and develop new and convincing musical elements and themes by providing information about options and styles of music. AI Collaborator: AI is a work partner who can help musicians to be creative and productive. For example Amadeus Code is an app to assist and inspire musical creativity by utilizing AI algorithms. It is an AI-powered songwriting assistant and its sales pitch is “Get unstuck with your songwriting with the power of artificial intelligence and say goodbye to writer’s block for good.”4 It is a stimulating, uplifting and inspirational muse for musicians.

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AI is a capable collaborator. It is an information-processing engine that provides inspiring support for musical creativity of human composers and musicians. For example, Jukedeck, a music creativity system powered by AI, worked with Enterarts (an AI music production company in South Korea) and held a concert to demonstrate their AI-human collaboration. In their announcement of the project they stated that “Both Jukedeck and Enterarts firmly believe that, rather than replacing human composers, the power of AI lies in its ability to be used as a tool by human composers and producers to fuel their creativity.”5 AI is also used as a critical tool. It can help musicians to be conscious of their styles and to encourage them to be more creative by providing statistical models of their music. If needed, it can help musicians to break their habitual patterns and styles. David Usher (a British-Canadian musician, the lead vocalist of the band Moist) comments on this critical function of AI when he shared his experience of using Lyric AI (an AIpowered technology for lyric composition). He says that “I would definitely like to use it [Lyric AI] as a writing partner for sure. One of the biggest challenges, and one of the reasons we decided to start with lyrics, is that as a writer who has written a lot of songs, you start to rewrite yourself. It’s, ‘How do I push my vocabulary out of its normal set? How do I push myself to a new place? How do I find input that is not always falling back to the same metaphors?’”6 Use of AI systems in music composition, production, and collaborative projects is gaining more popularity these days. Taryn Southern’s I AM AI (2018) is the first pop album composed and produced by AI. She used 4 AI applications (AIVA, Amper Music, Google’s Magent, and IBM’s Watson Beat) in her album. SKYGGE, a French group (Benoit Carré and a group of music researchers and artists) uses FLOW Machines (an AI system that helps artists to compose music by suggesting melodies, harmonies or chord progressions) in their album Hello World (2018). Other artists such as Arca, Holly Herndon, and Toro y Moi collaborated with AI in their albums. Alex Da Kid worked with IBM’s Watson Beat to compose songs. Watson Beat was trained on 26,000 Billboard Hot 100 songs and analyzed them for musical patterns such as genres, keys, and chord progressions. Da Kid says “Normally when I start creating, I just

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talk to people about their failed marriages or whatever….With Watson [Beat], it’s almost like having a million of yourself reading a million books at once and a million articles, and understanding social media. I could never do that.” 7 Watson Beat is a computational muse and collaborator who helped Da Kid to access and use diverse options and emotions of music.

AI as a Creative Technology for Original Music Watson Beat is used to assist Da Kid’s musical creativity, but can AI be trained to compose its own original songs? If an AI system is fully trained to identify different patterns of musical elements, to build their statistical models, and to transform its data into new patterns, can it compose new songs that are as good as the Billboard hit songs? Does an AI-powered assistive technology evolve into a genuine creative technology of music? Can AI replace human composers and musicians? AI composer or AI artist realizes this creative potential of AI. AI composer, AI artist: AI can compose its own music on the basis of its training that can provide statistical algorithms for creative and original music. There are some skepticisms on this ambitious view on the creative ability of AI. Jared Wolff, a tech journalist, states that At least for the foreseeable future, AI is incapable of creating music without mimicking an existing data set that originated from human innovation. Similar to the way AIVA pitched their product, Artificial Intelligence can be used to help the artist speed-up and maximize the composition process. It should be treated as a tool, not a replacement.8

The argument here is that AI music has limitations and it cannot be fully original or creative because, by its own computational nature, it relies heavily on its machine learning process that draws from musical pieces that are composed by human artists. “These machines use historical data sets and neural networks to recognize patterns and produce novel composition.” 9 In other words, AI music, in principle, is reshuffled or remixed statistically significant micro-features or micro-patterns of music

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composed by human musicians. For this reason and other related reasons (such as the current state [i.e., underdeveloped state] of AI technology and the successful use of AI as assistant technology), some musicians and music critics believe that AI is a wonderful assistive technology but not a genuinely creative or replacement technology. When he comments on his collaboration with an AI system, Pablo Castro (a senior software developer at Google Brain) states that From the beginning, it was always clear to both of us [Pablo Castro and David Usher] that we wanted to approach this as an assistive technology, not a replacement technology. We don’t want to create something where you press a button and you get the next top-40 hit. It’s really something that we want the artist to play with and to interact with.10

Against these skeptical viewpoints, one can think of AI as a composer in its own right. AI can compose its own music by its learning algorithms that are trained on a good amount of exemplary musical pieces. Drew Silverstein, a co-founder of Amper Music, states that “I think in a relatively short time that AI’s music, and Amper’s music, will be indistinguishable from human-created music in any genre or style...”11 In fact, Amper Music reports that their AI system passed the musical Turing test: Consumers could not tell the difference between music composed by Amper and by human composers.12 It seems AI is capable of composing convincing music that can fool the human listeners. Some YouTube creators posted samples of AI music and tested their ability to identify music composed by a machine. They could not consistently and perfectly tell the difference between music composed by AI and by human composers.13 It seems that AI can compose natural, convincing, and engaging music that human listeners can enjoy. AIVA posted several samples of AI music in their YouTube channel and they seem quite convincing to the listeners. One of the comments made on AIVA’s I am AI shows the appealing quality of AI music: “I knew that AI can make music but I always thought that it can only make a really mediocre music, but this is a real masterpiece that even made me shed a tear.”14

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AI can compose symphonies, large-scale orchestral pieces that require a high level of musical sophistication. Jason Flom (CEO of Lava Records), when he listened to a symphony composed by AI, exclaimed that “Oh my god, this is insane; it literally wrote the damn symphony!” 15 AIVA showcased its symphonic works and some of them were performed by real orchestras with human musicians. The Avignon Symphonic Orchestra performed I am AI (Symphonic Fantasy in A minor, Op. 24) and the Tsing Hua AI Orchestra played Genesis (Op. 21). Letz make it happen (Op. 23) is a large-scale symphonic piece for full orchestra and chorus, performed on the National Day (23rd of June 2017) celebrations in Luxembourg.16 Many musicians, however, believe that AI music is not fully original or creative. Considering the computational nature of its learning process, a creative AI system is not fully independent of the examples or guidance from human musicians. Although it can compose music that passes the Turing test so that it can convince human listeners that they are listening to non-AI music, it may not compose highly original music with creative features that human musicians can exhibit in their musical compositions because its computational process is critically dependent upon the statistical generalization and manipulation of the great musical pieces composed by human musicians. 17 In addition, an AI system may not develop a consistent musical character because its statistical learning models are constantly changing and evolving on the basis of the varying qualities and characters of its learning data sets. For these reasons, many believe that AI can compose nice and appealing music for personal and commercial purposes but AI music may not compete well with highly original and refreshingly creative music composed by talented human artists. David Usher states that “If you just look into the ecosystem, there are a ton of different companies racing to build AI-generated music and we’re starting to see it in the background of commercials, in video games, and that is how things seep in. They don’t come in at the top of the food chain; they come in in the middle somewhere and they seep in slowly and the technology just builds itself into your life.” 18 In the same context, Richard Gooch, CTO at the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) states that, “AI is coming. It’s already being used in multiple areas, but one thing is for sure: top talent in music is unique,

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incomparable, and transcendent.”19 Usher and Gooch do not say that AI is only a mechanical system of computation that cannot compose any appealing or inspiring music. They only point out that AI has its own musical character that may not be comparable to the character of seriously original and uniquely creative songs and music composed by human artists. Then, is AI music just a nice musical simulation of human creativity or does it genuinely change the way we create and enjoy music?

The Charted and Uncharted World of AI Music: a Holy Art or a Computational Circus? One of the major concerns on the success of AI music is that with the amazing computational power of AI, music can be manufactured and mass produced without any originality or creativity. AI music can be generic, mediocre, or characterless. Specifically, it can break the romantic ideal of music as the inspirational expression of inner passion. In his An die Musik (1817) a German composer Frantz Schubert (1779 -1828) calls music holy art (holde Kunst) that warms up the heart with love (“Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb' entzunden”) and carries us into a better world. Can AI provide inspirational and encouraging experience of music with its computational power? Does it bring us a new, uncharted world? In the previous sections I discussed how AI changes the way music is created and produced. However, the creative potential or artistic relevance of AI music is still debatable. Perhaps a better way to understand the creativity of AI music is to see how it affects our experience of and activity with music. In the following sections, I will focus on how AI affects our experience of or interaction with music and how it explores the uncharted world of art in three different ways.

Expanding and Transforming the Existing Territory of Music – Music for Everyone There are three directions where AI music can change the way we experience music. In the first direction, AI music stimulates and encourages the production of personalized music that fits the listener’s musical needs. There is a strong demand for music for film, TV, or video

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games. Many YouTube creators, for example, use stock music for their videos but they want more variety in their personalized music and soundscapes. Current music industry and music production cannot meet the full demand of the individualized and diversified needs of original music. AI music can fill this gap by providing services to individuals so that they can create and use music for their own videos, images, and other media outlets. Drew Silberstein, one of the co-founder of Amper Music states “Previously, a video editor would search stock music and settle for something sufficient….Now, with Amper, they can say ‘I know what I want, and in a matter of minutes, I can make it.”20 Oleg Stavitsky, CEO and a co-founder of Endel, also emphasizes the need to develop an AI system to provide personalized music and states that “there’s no playlist or song that can adapt to the context of whatever’s happening around you.”21 He claims that Endel users can create music that helps them to sleep well, focus more, or relax better. Both Amper and Endel help their users to participate in the process of composing music without musical training or expertise. That is, with the advancement of AI systems such as Amper and Endel, more people can enjoy creating and using their own personalized music. That is, music becomes part of our personal life. Everyone can make his or her own music with the help of AI and AI music becomes customized and individualized music for everyone. This is a trend of “democratizing music making.”22 AI makes it easy for people to be active and more involved in music making (composition and production of music). Therefore, AI music is an excellent example of how AI can be used to enrich our cultural life by diversifying and personalizing music both in production and consumption. AI broadens and expands the territory of music production and consumption to include more people and to support and fulfill their diverse needs and interests.

Supporting the Originality and the Variation of Music The second direction of AI music is related to how AI is used to support and cultivate the originality and the variation of music. If music is a complex pattern of sound, AI can help us to identify, experience, and appreciate the originality and variation of the patterns in musical composition, interpretation, and restoration. YACHT, an electropop band

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in Los Angeles, used a machine learning system to keep track of their entire catalog of music and train it to find any patterns and to develop new melodies. Since music is based on patterns melody, tempo, and harmony, it is always possible to find abstract formulas of musical styles and genres. Often the musical patterns identified by AI can be used to identify and categorize musical styles. 23 Additionally, when musicians fall into their habitual formulas to create music, AI can suggest, through its analysis of musical patterns, new styles and forms of music that are not explored by them. In this context, AI can help musicians to be more creative and original by providing information about their current (i.e., most probable or statistically recurrent) styles and other available options that they can consider in their future projects. If AI can quickly identify the repeated styles and the standard formulas of music, it can be also used against standardization, normalization, and habitualization. That is what YACHT did when they trained an AI machine learning system to find, modify, and mash-up different elements of their music. Claire Evans, the lead singer of YACHT, states that “AI forced us to come up against patterns that have no relationship to comfort. It gave us the skills to break out of our own habits.”24 If successful, AI supports the originality and creativity of music. AI is an algorithmic, rule-following machine but, ironically, it can be used as a machine for creative and original music. In classical music, pianists and violinists, in their live and recorded performances, play classical pieces with their individual interpretations. In pop music, different singers and bands play their versions of others’ works. Audience and listeners enjoy this type of diverse interpretations. In this context, AI, if properly trained on performances and recordings of different musicians, can support and facilitate creative and diverse interpretations of music. For example, if AI can clearly identify Vladimir Horowitz’s (1903 - 1989) and Glenn Gould’s (1932 - 1982) interpretations and performance styles of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, it can generate their (imaginary) performances of any musical pieces by Beethoven that they didn’t play in their life time. Or AI can generate completely new interpretations of classical pieces that haven’t been explored in any human performances. This type interpretative comparison and analysis by AI can provide fresh inspiration to pianists, violinists, and other instrumental and vocal artists.

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It also gives an exciting opportunity to classical music fans to listen to and enjoy virtuoso performances with touch of a button. A well-trained AI system can instantly respond to our requests such as “How would Horowitz play this piece if he were alive today?” and “How would Gould play Chopin’s piano concertos which he didn’t record or play in his life time?” In addition, Al can be used to restore, rebuild or finish incomplete or unfinished musical works. To do this type of work, one should be fully familiar with the original composer’s musical style, patterns of orchestration or sound structure, and idiosyncratic mannerisms. For example, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (symphony no. 8, b-minor, D. 759) can be completed if an AI is sufficiently trained on Schubert’s symphonic works and fully identify his musical style through a statistical model developed by its learning algorithm. In fact, a Chinese IT company Huawei's AI team trained its system (Mate 20 Pro) to finish Schubert’s unfinished symphony.25 The Huawei’s AI composed a melody for the unfinished part and a human composer (Lucas Cantor) arranged an orchestra score. Although the AI’s completion of the Unfinished Symphony is very different from Brian Newbould’s completion of the same symphony and there are some unusual or quirky features in the AI’s completion, this type of restorative or rebuilding work shows the amazing potential of AI in classical music.

Finding and Exploring the Uncharted World of Interactive Musical Evolution The creativity stimulated by an AI learning machine, as in the context of YACHT’s innovative approach to music, shows AI’s stimulating potential in musical creativity. It is a type of creativity that attempts to break out of existing forms and styles of music to find new options and ideas. There is, however, another form of creativity AI music can provide in the way music is performed and listened to. With the help of an AI system, music can grow and change as it is played. Musical performance is not simply the re-presentation of fully specified music but the re-enactive and interactive evolution of music. The third direction of AI music lies in its performative musical evolution.

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When Jai Paul’s (a British songwriter and recording artist) new version of Jasmine is played in 2019, the AI induced evolution of music took place. While the basic form of an original track remains the same, each performance develops a slight variation or improvisation to show the evolution or mutation of the track with continuous cycle of merging and diverging forms of musical components. In this new version, the recorded Jasmine became refreshed and reorganized from its static and fixed form. Typically, when a song or a piece of music is recorded, it is played and reproduced in exactly the same way. This is the way people listen to music from their downloads, CDs, tapes, and LPs. However, the predictable and static nature of recorded music disappears in live performances of music. Live music has unpredictable, spontaneous, interactive and extemporaneous components. Music is not completely fixed, predictable, and fully regulated when it is performed. It becomes a growing organism in its live performance. This is the reason why experience of live music is exciting, and engaging. Currently, a clear line is drawn between recorded and live music. With the introduction of AI, however, one can break or at least blur the line and combine the two forms of music in a vibrant way. The recorded music can be performed as quasi-live music when it is re-played. Music can be a living organism even in its recorded forms. A London-based company Bronze uses AI to re-generate or re-create music from its static and fixed (i.e., recorded) forms into lively and spontaneous forms. Under Bronze’s AI-project, music is evolving from its fossilized recordings. An example of this form of AI music can be found in Arca’s work. Arca (Alejandra Ghersi, an electro-experimental musician, music producer) collaborated with French multimedia artist Philippe Parreno and composed music for the installation art piece Echo. This lobby music is played in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York where Echo is exhibited. The music changes with the temperature, the number of audience, and other conditions of the lobby so that it is not repeated in exactly the same form. Every play is different. Arca states that “It’s such an honor to be able to compose for an AI that will never make the music play the same way twice - it’s a live transmission forever in mutation.”26 Music becomes more spontaneous and extemporaneous and AI makes this organic transformation and mutation of music possible and

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provides new experience of musical evolution. This type of constantly evolving of AI-enhanced re-generative music opens up not only new but also uncharted territory of music. Arca states that “it (her AI-enhanced composition) opens up a world of possibilities.”27 AI-enhanced recorded music shares the exciting qualities live music because the computational and learning power of AI can bring about the organic change in the recorded music. In its AI-enhanced mode, music becomes organically growing patterns of sound that are constantly changing and evolving. It seems AI liberates music from the confinements of fixed formal structures of recordings. It not only transforms the way music is produced (music will become more interactive, engaging, and individually tailored experience) but also changes our perception and experience of music (music will be perceived as constantly evolving patterns of sound that interact with our personal activity in the changing environment).

Conclusion In this chapter, I discussed how AI impacts the production, consumption, and experience of music and its innovative and transformative influence on the way people approach, perceive, interact with and experience music. Specifically, I focused on how AI affects the existing territory of music and how it explores and opens up the new and uncharted territory of music. The following are summaries of how AI contributes to or changes our musical experience. AI as a Medium/Tool: AI is a medium and a tool of musical expression. It can be used as a musical instrument with amazing computational power and learning ability that can help musicians to deliver their musical inspirations and passions into concrete musical forms. AI as a Composer and Performer: An AI system is an artist and musician who can compose musical pieces and play its own work. The creativity and originality of its work depend critically on its learning processes. Although it may have limitations or idiosyncratic quirkiness on certain aspects of music that it composes, it will become a strong musical engine to create convincing and inspiring music. It may lack its consistent character because of its statistical learning models that are constantly

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changing but, on the positive side, it is open to new musical forms and styles and can learn to adapt quickly to the changing trends of music. AI as a Collaborator and Co-Producer: An AI system can collaborate with human artists to enrich and enhance the artistic and interpretative qualities of musical composition and performance. AI as an Engaging Facilitator of Musical Activity and Creativity: An AI system can provide different forms of musical experience by facilitating flexible, interactive, individually tailored and ever evolving platforms for both novices and professionals of music. People will focus more on the living experience of music that is interactively changing and growing in their personal environments than on the fixed forms and structures of music (scores, recorded sound, or place and time of performance). The AIenhanced or AI-enriched experience of music brings music close to us in our everyday activities and our personal lifestyles. AI as a Foundation of Living and Evolving Experience of Music: One of the innovative contributions of AI to music is that it can make musical works as living and evolving organisms that interact with our environments. As I discussed in the previous section, an AI system can enable musical works to be more interactive to their audience and their environments by modifying their musical expressions. Depending on time, temperature, weather, lighting, size of the room, number of audience, and other external (physical) and internal (psychological) conditions, music can be played in different modes or tempos. One cannot play the same music again if AI flexibly adjusts and arranges a given musical piece so that it can adapt to its playing environment. The amazing computational power of AI makes this type of adaptation and evolution possible. There will be many evolving variations of a musical piece and people will enjoy changing and growing adaptations of music as it interacts with them in their musical environments. It seems that AI shifts our attention from music as a fixed structure of sound patterns (melody, tempo, harmony etc.) to music as interactive experience. Music becomes living experience and AI technology makes it possible.

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AI transforms our perception of music as static structure of sound patterns (patterns of melody, tempo, etc.) into an open and evolving system that provides dynamic and interactive experience. Regarding AI’s ability to create constantly evolving music, Arca says “There’s something freeing about not having to make every single microdecision, but rather, creating an ecosystem where things tend to happen, but never in the order you were imagining them…It opens up a world of possibilities.”28 The uncharted world of music created by AI is a world of new possibilities and an open and continuously changing musical ecosystem. AI brings us to this new experience of music.

Notes 1 “AICAN (AI Creative Adversarial Network) was trained on 80,000 images of the greatest works from art history,” AICAN, Accessed September 2, 2021, https://aican.io/story. 2 Ibid. 3 Benjamin Arango, “Top 10 AI Music Composers in 2021,” Wondershare, September 2, 2021. https://filmora.wondershare.com/audio-editing/best-ai-musiccomposer.html. 4 Stuart Dredge, “Music Created by Artificial Intelligence Is Better Than You Think,” Onezero, February 1, 2019. https://onezero.medium.com/music-createdby-artificial-intelligence-is-better-than-you-think-ce73631e2ec5. 5 Musically, “Jukedeck takes its AI music to Korea with K-Pop collaboration,” Musically, February 28, 2018, https://musically.com/2018/02/27/jukedeck-takesai-music-korea-k-pop-collaboration/. 6 Michael Raine, “Rise of the Robots: How AI Is Changing the Music World,” Canadian Musician, 39 (5) (2018): 40. 7 Daryl Pereira, “Alex Da Kid and Watson make music together; Grammynominee uses machine language to create hit song,” Medium, February 1, 2017. https://medium.com/@darylp/alex-da-kid-and-watson-make-music-togetherc251908c1bca. 8 Jared Wolff, “Why New AI never Replace Humans in Music,” Sustainability Review, September 8, 2020. https://sustainablereview.com/ai-music/. 9 Ibid. 10 Raine, “Rise of the Robots,” 39. 11 Ibid., 40. 12 Rajon, “AI music composition passed Turing test,” Taiwan AI Labs, February 8, 2018. https://ailabs.tw/human-interaction/ai-music-composition/. The Taiwan AI

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labs performed a music recognition test and AI music passed the Turing test: Participants did not consistently differentiate music composed by AI against music by human composer (J. S. Bach). “Most people gave 2 ~ 3 correct guesses out of 5, which is of similar accuracy as random selection…” 13 TwoSetViolin, “Artificial Intelligence Composed This Symphony!?,” YouTube, September 6, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R69JYEfCSeI 14 AIVA, “AIVA – ’Letz make it happen’, Op. 23,” YouTube, June 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Z2n7BhMPY. This is a comment made by Herman Brooks in the AIVA’s YouTube channel. 15 Raine, “Rise of the Robots,” 38. 16 Classic4Seasons, “Avignon symphonic orchestra [ORAP] plays AIVA: Symphonic Fantasy in A minor, Op. 24, ‘I am A.I.’,” YouTube, Septermber 30, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1Og7o5kAc. AIVA, “AIVA – ’Letz make it happen’, Op. 23,” YouTube, June 29, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Z2n7BhMPY. TsingHua AI Orchestra, “AIVA: Symphonic Fantasy in a minor, Op.21, ‘Genesis’,” YouTube, July 9, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP89SWljqfM. 17 Arthur Miller, The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019). Ross Cole, “The Problem with AI Music: Song and Cyborg Creativity in the Digital Age,” Popular Music 39 (2) (2020): 332–38. Miller discusses the challenges and possibilities of AI music and Cole critically discusses the future of AI music. 18 Raine, “Rise of the Robots,” 40. 19 Ibid. 20 Andrew Chow, “There's a Wide-Open Horizon of Possibility.' Musicians Are Using AI to Create Otherwise Impossible New Song,” Time, Feb 5, 2020. https://time.com/5774723/ai-music/. 21 Ibid. 22 Dredge, “Music Created by Artificial Intelligence Is Better Than You Think.” 23 Yu-Hsin Chang, and Yao Shu-Nung, “Artificial Intelligence on the Identification of Beiguan Music,” Archives of Acoustics 46 (3) (2021): 471–78. In fact, AI is trained to identify and distinguish the three different types of Beiguan music (traditional Chinese music for theatrical performance). 24 Chow, “There's a Wide-Open Horizon of Possibility.” 25 Anacona Villarroel Rodrigo, “Franz Schubert - Symphony No.8 in B minor, D.759 ("Unfinished") finalized by artificial intelligence,” YouTube, March 17, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6OUGRsslJY. 26 Chow, “There's a Wide-Open Horizon of Possibility.” 27 Ibid.

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Salvatore Maicki, “Arca has composed the lobby music for the newly renovated MoMA,” The Fader, October 16, 2019. https://www.thefader.com/2019/10/16/arca-museum-of-modern-art-momaphilippe-pharreno.

References AICAN. “AICAN (AI Creative Adversarial Network) was trained on 80,000 images of the greatest works from art history.” Accessed September 2, 2021. https://aican.io/story. AIVA. “AIVA – ’Letz make it happen’, Op. 23.” YouTube, June 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Z2n7BhMPY. Arango, Benjamin. “Top 10 AI Music Composers in 2021.” Wondershare, September 2, 2021. https://filmora.wondershare.com/audio-editing/ best-ai-music-composer.html. Chang, Yu-Hsin, and Shu-Nung Yao. “Artificial Intelligence on the Identification of Beiguan Music.” Archives of Acoustics 46 (3) (2021): 471–78. doi:10.24425/aoa.2021.138139. Chow, Andrew. “There's a Wide-Open Horizon of Possibility.' Musicians Are Using AI to Create Otherwise Impossible New Songs.” Time, Feb 5, 2020. https://time.com/5774723/ai-music/. Classic4Seasons. “Avignon symphonic orchestra [ORAP] plays AIVA: Symphonic Fantasy in A minor, Op. 24, ‘I am A.I.’.” Youtube, September 30, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1Og7o5kAc. Dredge, Stuart. “Music Created by Artificial Intelligence Is Better Than You Think.” Onezero, February 1, 2019. https://onezero.medium.com/music-created-by-artificial-intelligenceis-better-than-you-think-ce73631e2ec5. Jukedeck. 2021. “Jukedeck creates electronic music from scratch in seconds.” Accessed September 2, 2021. https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/jukedeck-ai-creates-uniqueelectronic-music-seconds/. Maicki, Salvatore. “Arca has composed the lobby music for the newly renovated MoMA.” The Fader, October 16, 2019. https://www.thefader.com/2019/10/16/arca-museum-of-modern-artmoma-philippe-pharreno.

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Musically. 2018. “Jukedeck takes its AI music to Korea with K-Pop collaboration.” Musically, February 28, 2018. https://musically.com/2018/02/27/jukedeck-takes-ai-music-korea-kpop-collaboration/. Pereira, Daryl. 2017. “Alex Da Kid and Watson make music together; Grammy-nominee uses machine language to create hit song.” Medium, February 1, 2017. https://medium.com/@darylp/alex-da-kid-and-watson-make-musictogether-c251908c1bca. Raine, Michael. “Rise of the Robots: How AI Is Changing the Music World.” Canadian Musician 39 (5) (2018): 38–41. https://0-search-ebscohost-com.catalog.aulibrary.org/login.aspx?direct =true&db=aph&AN=131865380&site=ehost-live. Rajon. “AI music composition passed Turing test”. Taiwan AI Labs, February 8, 2018. https://ailabs.tw/human-interaction/ai-music-composition/. Rodrigo, Anacona Villarroel. “Franz Schubert - Symphony No.8 in B minor, D.759 ("Unfinished") finalized by artificial intelligence.” YouTube, March 17, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6OUGRsslJY. Tigre Moura, Francisco, and Charlotte Maw. “Artificial Intelligence Became Beethoven: How Do Listeners and Music Professionals Perceive Artificially Composed Music?” Journal of Consumer Marketing 38 (2) (2021): 137–46. doi:10.1108/JCM-02-2020-3671. TsingHua AI Orchestra. “AIVA: Symphonic Fantasy in a minor, Op.21, ‘Genesis’.” YouTube, July 9, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP89SWljqfM. TwoSetViolin. “Artificial Intelligence Composed This Symphony!?” YouTube, September 6, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R69JYEfCSeI Wolff, Jared. “Why New AI never Replace Humans in Music.” Sustainability Review, September 8, 2020. https://sustainablereview.com/ai-music/.

CHAPTER SIX A PHENOMENOLOGICAL MEDITATION INSIDE PLATH’S “THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE”1 ELLEN MILLER For women, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change.2

The key philosophical issue “The Moon and the Yew Tree” (Moon) opens for readers is the interconnectedness between immanence and transcendence.3 Within the poem, Plath speaks about the possibility of suicide without specifying the act by name. The body-that-is-choosing suicide displays a bodily possibility on the margins of life and death, where being-toward-death becomes part of what it means to be alive. Jaspers explains, “[T]he more decisively I am aware of my freedom, the more decisively I am also aware of the transcendence through which I am.” Plath yearned for spiritual encounters that would bring her into contact with the wholly other; encounters like this can be called sacred for their chiasmic movement between imminence and transcendence. Plath expresses this desire for that which she lacks through a yet unfulfilled spirituality that includes the possibility of suicide. Plath experienced transcendence through this possibility of suicide and the possibility of creating poetry that would cut through the reader. She calls words “axes” in the poem “Words.” We experience these broad tensions between life and death in The Moon and the Yew Tree’s counterpoint rhythms. Beneath the poem’s quiet rhyming and repetition of key terms, we can experience a more primitive rhythm that resembles chanting and marching. The other primary tension with the poem is between balance and being thrown offbalance. We will see this falling off balance most vividly in the section

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devoted to the language spoken by the silent suicidal body. Finally, we experience the speaker’s confrontation with otherness through her attempts to make contact with the material feminine horizon from which she has been separated. Before we look more closely at the ways in which the poem transfigures our categories of rational comprehension, we will observe the poem as a whole in order to gain a broad sense of what is at work in the poem and how the poem is working on our bodies. Moon opens with a speaking and seeing of places that are uncannily familiar. We begin immersed in the light of the mind. A blue light reveals the cold surface of this internal perspective. At the poem’s end, we remain in a place of disequilibrium, but this sense of falling brings us towards an experience of releasement. The beginning and ending of the poem are filled with blue light. At first, this lighting allows us to look into the internal mental-scape. In the last stanza, the saints have absorbed this blue light entirely. The clouds also participate in this absorption process. The blue light source has been transformed into a lighting the speaker describes as mystical. Origin and ground have become the event, the happening of sight. The speaker whispers the word “mystical” along with her naming of the color blue, but the depth potential of blue is fading as the speaker’s mood permeates the space of the poem. Light and voice work to create an experience of falling out of balance within one’s body. The poem’s lighting affects us bodily because the visual relies upon the tactile dimension. In this poem, light touches upon the page through the deep bruise-like strokes of blue and black and the ever-present white-dark spaces of silence. The poem ends in blackness and silence after we have fallen a long way. The poem’s beginning and ending are framed in blue light. Noticeably, the middle part of the poem omits blue in one stanza and then returns this color in the third stanza where the moon dons blue garments that terrorize the speaker. This retiring of blue occurs in the most vivid and thick line of the work: Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. The moon, her mother—a goddess—now stands in the place of the Christian mother, Mary. Plath alternates between heavy and fluid language, language that

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pounds and fluidly falls onto the page and out of our mouths. One way the poem moves toward a more balanced understanding of the divine through its use of rhyme. Rhyme provides balance in poetry. In this poem, the balance achieved is that between instituted language and “fallen” language, language that falls away from custom, tradition, and into a more originary way of experiencing language. The question we are addressing in this section concerns the poem’s refusal of sedentary religious narratives that marginalize, negate, or appropriate maternal voices and images. Plath’s poetic framework resonates with existentialist writings that focus on our unique relationship with the divine. The poem announces the emergence of a reimagining of the divine symbolic more than it directly asks these questions. We learn about this divine realm by journeying through otherness towards the other. In this case, we witness the longing for a return to the (m)other, that horizon that permeates and shelters, what Heidegger calls earth. In our exploration of Plath’s desire for a feminine divine, we draw closer to Heidegger’s understanding of the opening clearing, that which grants being its place within the world. This embodied aspect has been suppressed in Heidegger’s writings, even the later writings, in order to make room for his more explicit purpose, an authentic encounter with language itself. By listening to Plath’s pathways, we shift our focus onto the specific bodily being of the speaker and our own bodies.

Poetic Absences and Light Moon’s atmosphere is imbued with a cold stony energy, an energy that moves inward towards the speaker. This inward moving process resembles a tree’s roots that spread closer to the source of life, the tree itself. This energy finally closes around the speaker and engulfs the reader and speaker in silken and blackness. The middle stanzas (two and three) stand out from the other two stanzas. Even the last stanza with its brooding declarative tone: “And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence” does not disarm in the way this intermediary place disrupts the flow of language that pours out from the first and last stanzas. These middle stanzas gradually e-

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strange the speaker and reader. We will now look more closely at the ways light works in the entire poem as we move from the beginning stanzas into the work’s middle. We will repeatedly return to this first stanza since it grounds our initial sense of concern about the speaker’s bodily existence. In the second stanza, there is an absence of light. This absence of visible light initiates our poetic falling into a face-to-face encounter with the other. We will experience the poetic qualities of otherness by describing the texture and quality of light as it impacts our visual system and tactile sensations. The speaker moves towards her m(other) through the living sensations that arise through absence. The poem’s first naming of absence arises with the speaker’s admission that she cannot see where there is to get to. The light of the mind is becoming liquid: fumy, spirituous, weightless. Blue light calls forth the blue of the sky, the depth of the ocean. Yet, depth has retreated in his first stanza where the air has become frozen, making it impossible to release oneself from sedimented meanings. The universals of the mind—the space of traditional philosophy—have been painted over with a frozen brush. This leaves the speaker in an even more abstract realm, the planetary realm that the speaker denotes as aligned with the mental and rational realms. The blue light of the first stanza surrounds this entire stanza and then empties itself into the white space that appears after the speaker’s admission of uncertainty. This while opening on-to the page appears at once as a place of emptiness and also as a secure background that allows the worlds to appear at all. Its cold, universal quality makes it all the more present. How does this light affect us bodily? Is this light a tactile, sensible light? If it is, we might expect it to possess an energy that would explain how this light illuminates our ways of being in the world, our ways of being entangled with the cognitive-linguistic realm: Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. (6-7)

In a move that prefigures the alarming deconstruction performed in the third stanza, where the speaker undoes two-thousand years of church history, the last line of the first stanza places the female speaker outside

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the Western that privileges sight over other senses. This frightening admission of not being able to see takes on a different meaning, if we hear the indignant tone concerning this need to have one’s paths brightly illuminated. By focusing on the word simply, we can hear the speaker laughing at the tradition’s fear of blindness, a fear we find repeated in literary, psychoanalytic, and philosophical texts. An almost comic tone erupts into this space—a tone Plath evokes frequently in her poetry and fiction—adding to the strength of the speaker’s voice. The poem’s words emerge and shine like particles and saves of light. Words—like the blue light designated as the essential lighting of this poem—are the essence of this poem. Worlds light our way through this linguistic landscape. Our initial encounter with the printed word on the page presents a flattened copy of words that, when spoken, murmur with a cavernous, hollow sound. The first stanza alerts us that not all poetry contains this depth. That is, we cannot advance a simple dichotomy between everyday language and poetic language; even within poetry, it remains possible that the sensuous quality of words may not surface. One quality that enables us to distinguish art from non-art is this quality of depth as articulated in Merelau-Ponty’s writings. The poem’s beginnings cover the reader with a constant streaming of light and words. The reader is left exposed by this radiance of the mind. In this realm, the speaker becomes exposed through the striking chords of declarative statements the speaker utters. Each word and line delivers itself with a heaviness that characterizes the cognitive-linguistic realm: In this space I am not at home, and do not know how to return to the ground of my being. After his admission of uncertainty, the poem retreats into the security that can be found in the absence of words: white space. We now move into the poem’s middle region, the part that is in transition like the moon that is “a face in its own right.” The light of the mind has shown that the speaker must face up to her responsibilities and release the certainties that used to guide her life. We watch the spacer follow the light from four sources in each stanza: the blue light of the mind, the light of the moon, candlelight burning before religious statues, and the light of darkness. The light of the mind does not produce a sense of calm or a

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feeling of tenderness. The heaviness we experience in this stanza does not arise from feeling the body in all its weightiness; rather, the heaviness arises from within words themselves. Language has become weighty, but has also seized this quality from the speaker’s body. The speaker’s body is defined through what it is incapable of doing, what it lacks. This stanza also introduces the speaker’s voice. This voice cannot be separated from the speaker’s body since it is our bodies that speak through the vehicle of voice. Similarly, a singer does not emit sounds that are separable from her bodily postures, attitudes, and bodily styles. Singers reveal these ways of being embodied through singing. In Moon, articulations of the speaker’s voice also bring us closer to an understanding of the bodily knowledge that arise from poetic language. The voice that comes forth from the cavernous body of the poem is fumy and spirituous. It fuses with the speaking that occurs in the mind where word-upon-word are indistinguishable from the other. The speaker has lost her proper place in the world, and the divine has been mistakenly found in the face of mortals. Earth has also become dangerous, a site of potential dis-ruption, a place that does not sustain or provide tenderness. The poem’s speaker does not know how to determine her place in the world. She possesses an uneasiness in this place where she has been thrown into the role of divine creator: the grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God. It is as if we must become gods in order to make our way in this place. What is the relationship between the internal workings of the mind and the external world? Moon tears open the original togetherness of inner and outer by exposing the ground of being where their alliance is assured. Caroline Barnard notes that by the time of the Ariel poems, “external settings have become internalized so that they serve only as function of the speaker’s peculiar or distorted vison.” Plath also fuses inner and outer throughout The Bell Jar where we move inside the main character’s mental landscape even though the speaker moves from New York City, college dorm room, state mental hospital, private psychiatric facilities. In Moon, internal and external are fluid and sinuous. This poem continues a strict delineation of lines (seven per stanza within four almost evenly paced stanzas). The rhythm oscillates around a set

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rhythm that we sound out even though the poem does not constantly follow this timing. This rhythm cannot see where there is to get to, and this admission completes itself at the end of each line that does not imitate this five foot line. We hear this rhythm; it recedes; it returns. The rhythm becomes sedimented into the experience of the poem while also leaving traces of an absence that will never quite arrive: “I simply cannot see where there is to get to…” disrupts the gaze of the reader. There is a double performance of blindness enacted into the poem’s environs. This double-blinding leaves light for the shadows that arise later in the poem where the light from inside the church and light from the gothic figure of the moon blend with one another. “I simply cannot see where there is to get to” conceals the stony resignation that precedes this weightless admonition. The weight of these headstones distances the speaker from her home, presumed to be somewhere other than this cold planetary place. Later, when we look more closely at the gendered meanings within the poem, we will see that this original light of the mind has made it difficult for the speaker to see the feminine horizon at all. This first stanza presents a double negation.4 We have lost our footing, our rooting, that which makes it possible for us to see at all. There is a joining together that occurs in this place, a joining that arises through discord and disjunction, through the rift that arises in the speaker’s sight. The first place the speaker looks in order to regain her vision is the moon that is situated high above her. She cannot see where there is to get to and yet she turns towards this object that is other than that which provides the world with bright, clear light: the sun. The speaker looks towards the object that relies upon the sun for its energy. The moon’s shining is considered secondary to the necessary daylight that fills the spaces of our public lives. These daily lightings light up our dealings in the world without leaving space for absence. However, the poem’s speaker privileges the night at this point in the poem and then again when she depicts the nocturnal creatures that fill the fabric of her mother’s light. The maternal is “a confrontation with the always failing desire to find the origin. This origin is a blind image—what one is never permitted to see. So the womanmother becomes the screen which allows the (other) image to be seen.”5 Night is that element that permits passage into where there is to get to, but

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we do not discover where there is to get to without visiting and revisiting the pain that has been inscribed into the speaker’s body.

Opening onto the Feminine Body The dark crime named in the second stanza does not receive detailed linguistic elaboration. It is left for the reader to further elaborate the meaning of this troubling phrase. The moon is designated as feminine in the third stanza. Moon is the speaker’s mother. This moon holds the sea captive, dragging it, and making it submit to the lightings and retrievals of this nocturnal compass. The second stanza hurries and pushes past this admission of guilt on the moon’s part. Internal and end rhymes build and crescendo upon one another.6 The perfect rhyme of right with white and upset with quiet taken as a whole also produce a slant rhyme with another: white/quiet/right/upset. These multiplying rhymes empty into a flurry of words ending with various forms of vowels followed by “y.” Our mouths move from the grand stretch needed to gesticulate Plath’s “O-gape” and then curve into the repetitions of gestures that push our mouths back into our throats with a tension that erupts from the strange uniting of the soft “y” ending with this deliberate movement. We will now spend some time with the contours of this substantial word: O-gape. This is important because the word stands out within the poem. Its round open appearance opens our mouths as we struggle to pronounce this odd creation. The word displays a narrow sense of echoism (narrow because the echoism is enacted by this one word alone). The word’s sound closely resembles the sound it denotes, in this case the almost silent arching of the mouth into an opening figure. Performing this movement places our lips into the same shape as the word on the page.7 As we elaborate our performance of this speaking we will see that the opening questions of this chapter are being addressed. There we asked about the internal speaking of lines that occurs in the first stanza. The appearance of this gaping word “O-gape” begins to open us as this word opens itself on the page. O-gape.8 The word is not quite a word in the usual sense for it does not refer to any easily identifiable object. Yet, the word has a definite meaning

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in the poem, especially as we begin to see the word interact with other words in the poem, words that also open our mouths with a gaping “oo” sound: moon, door, loose, and somewhat less open in the words bong, own, nothing, gothic, mother. Importantly, the letter “o” has been capitalized in order to visually document this letter’s prominence in our sounding out of the word. If we could isolate this word from the rest of the poem and place it on its own to determine its meaning, we would confront the limits of the logocentric view of language. Logocentrism claims that speech has to represent something in order to have meaning. This poem demonstrates that speech can have meaning even when it does not represent something or designate an external state of affairs. To speak the word O-gape is to stand with your jaw relaxed enough to allow tensions to release. This means, though, that there are tensions pushing down that need to be discarded. Speaking this creation invites the reader to experience the absence that accompanies and haunts our bodies. The body allows the reader to experience the opening of this word O-gape through its own position as “incomplete, gaping open.”9 The word itself in our speaking of it becomes a performance of a clearing opening performed with our two lips creating enough space, enough of a measured difference from each other to let room emerge between these two fleshy parts.10 The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mothers. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness---The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, in me in particular, its mild eyes. (15-21)

Fluidly, seamlessly, the poem eases into its third stanza. Here the most pronounced rhyme is the exact repetition of eyes. It appears first in the left corner of the stanza and then again at the edge of the right hand corner, boxing in the remainder of words within the stanza. As readers we are made aware of the visual perception of the poem because the poet has gone to great lengths to point us towards the sensory apparatus that is most dominant in both Western theoretical language and even more importantly in our everyday engagements with the external world. The third stanza

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builds upon the second stanza’s repetition of the single letter “y,” and adds to this repetition by placing the word “eye” in close proximity to “yew” which looks similar when we read over the poem at a regular pace of reading. Taken as a whole, one of the dominant sounds echoed throughout the poem is that of words that resemble see/sea: Mary, humility, planetary, fumy, simply, terribly, soberly, effigy. This echoing is buried throughout the poem. When we isolate these words and speak them aloud, they produce a feeling of internal falling and flight. We are not told to whom the eyes of the second line of this stanza belong, but the visual-physical rhyme between yew and eyes joins these words together. We are left with the emerging perception of the yew tree’s ability to witness the events that arise in the second part of this poem. The poem lays bare the speaker’s confrontation with her own ability to become silent, to fall into the earth, the soil she shares with the yew tree and headstones. Poetically, we experience this as the steady reception of words that trail off, and empty into endings that are fluid, feminine endings. These ten falling words are the counterpoint to the poem’s more regulated rhythm.

Other Ways of Listening and Seeing the Poem11 Moon counts out rhythms that circulate around pentameter, occasionally staying within this familiar meter, sometimes arriving just one foot beneath, other times one foot above. The technical term foot used to count out and measure poetic rhythms reveals the hidden poetic architecture available beneath the written words that manifest themselves on the page. The standard of this poem aspires towards five feet. This standard meter becomes increasingly commanding at the end of the poem where its intensity crescendos until finally we enter the spoken-written silence where the last word breaks off into the depths of white space, the no-thing of the poem. We can now look at the poem in its elemental nature. The visual sculpture presented below brings the poem’s use of rhyme and color into sharper focus. This portraiture illustrates that the poem is at once in words and beyond them.

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Chapter Six Moon Yew Tree This light mind cold planetary trees mind black light blue grasses unload griefs feet IGod Prickling ankles murmuring humility Fumy spirituous mists inhabit place Separatedhouse row headstones simply cannot see where get moon no doorface own right White knuckle terribly upset drags sea dark crime quiet O-gape complete despair I live here Twice Sunday bells startle sky Eight tongues affirming Resurrection end soberly bong out names yew tree points Gothic shape eyes lift after find moon moon mother not sweet Mary blue garments unloose small bats and owls I would believe tenderness face effigy gentled candles Bending me particularmild eyes I fallen long wayClouds flowering Blue mysticalface stars Inside church saints all blue Floating delicate feet cold pews hands faces stiff holiness moon sees nothing this bald wild message yew tree blackness blackness silence12

When we compare the visual structure of The Moon and the Yew Tree with the poems we have discussed so far, it becomes apparent that this work advances the look of the poem with its abundance of markings, etchings and its absence of absence. The work commands its environment with the solidity and certainty of its surface markings. The withdrawal of white space comes forth quite readily, especially after our engagement

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with Ariel’s fluid lines. Ariel’s lines dissolved into the page with a red spiritual energy that seethed its markings into an airy elementality: Something else hauled us through air in that poem, but the medium brought forth most abundantly there was the airy, pulsing of rider/speaker/reader. In Moon, the heavy pulsating rhythm pushes down upon our bodies, into our feet as they attempt to remain grounded on earth. The word God stands out in the open from the outset and exceeds the first stanza, overflowing the space of the lines that precede it and those that follow. And towards the end of the poem it is the wild that strikes us as set apart from the rest of the poem. The speaker begins to approach the wild maternal moon as a goddess rather than relying upon the relics of traditional religion that do not let her find her way in the landscape in which she finds herself. The atmosphere of the poem is one of militarization, an ever-increasing regularization of lines, organized around a central cadence comprised of five feet. Blackness shrouds the poem and the work’s attempt to light up the face of the holy. The mood of this poem spreads out from the flattened lines, lines of organization, organized instituted spaces, the five- beat line to which the poem yearns to return. This yearning towards a return to regularity appears again in the speaker’s longing to find that her home admits the institutional space of this church and cemetery site. Each line becomes part of our own bodies as we attempt to feel the beating in our limbs. It is not that all readers will in fact perform this gesture, but that once spoken, the gesture speaks to the reader phenomenologically in ways that open the poem to the reader. This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,...(1-3)

The seven-line stanza is a breath, opening onto the naming of God in the third line. The line expands so as to make room for the saying of the Unsayable.

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Chapter Six Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumy, spirituous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. (4-7)

Once this unsayable becomes manifest, the stanza closes down and retreats into the concealed depth announced by the speaker’s lamentation, “I simply cannot see where there is to get to.” The opening onto the divine sends the speaker back into the ground, back to the ground in which she finds herself, this cemetery ground. Prior to the lamentation that the speaker does not know her place in this world, she places herself firmly in this scene: separated from my house by a row of headstones. She specifies that these are headstones. Using the word “stone” in her description weighs down the line and at its end we stop and there is a long break before we admit that this place leaves us unable to proceed even though there is still poetic space to encounter. We have not yet encountered the moon or the yew tree, only the unknown “this” at the beginning of the poem. Another way in which the poem uses intensifying tensions is in the symmetry of the lines: This is the light of the mind and The moon sees nothing of this. One begins with the neutral term “this” while the other ends with this unnamed depth that pushes us further into silence and blackness. Each line possesses three beats per measure, the rhyme resembles the familiar rhythm of a nursery rhyme. When we bring these lines into nearness with one another, we can intensify this familiar chanting steady rhythm. We begin: This is the light of the mind. The blue light that illuminates the mind is not the same as the mental sphere itself. This work first brings us into a space that is lit, where even the cold planetary space of the mind receives a lighting up from outside of itself. This space, the “this” receives the benefit of the shining light that radiates from outside the mind’s secure space. A marching rhythm guides us through these stanzas. There is a weightiness to the rhythm and rhyme that continues when we meet the other part of this repetitive visual rhyme: The moon sees nothing of this. These two lines focus our attention onto the unknown this. Both sentences

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use the word this in an ambiguous sense. Plath’s use of “this” resembles Heidegger’s later usage of ‘Es gibt’ to speak about being. In both cases the author uses spoken language to name something unspeakable.

Inside the body-in-pain The suicidal body presents the spectator with a body that can no longer be understood and taken as an object among other objects. The Moon and the Yew Tree displays this hidden bodily possibility by covering over this ever-present choice of non-existence with a poetic voice that is at once alarmingly declarative/authoritative and ambivalent/ambiguous about the future. It is the future that is at issue for this speaker, more specifically her possible future commitments. John MacQuarrie describes commitment as “the acceptance of a continuing obligation to pursue some goal or policy of action.”13 The speaker’s body-in-pain can barely speak and yet the poem forward to a space where non-being becomes a possible way of being. The ontological question pursued by Heidegger: Why is there something rather than nothing receives its own turning as the speaker does not even dare to ask the question. Instead, she transforms her own body into a negation of the question and prevents the question from being asked in its original form. The poem calls forth a shining whiteness from the edges of the black etching of words on the page and the boldly spoken repetition of black in the lines of the poem: We begin and end with the naming of black. A question that arises from this blackness and the speaker’s silenced body is why does the speaker move towards nothingness rather than something?14 For our purposes, the question we need to follow both poetically and philosophically then is: What sort of language and shared meaning does the mute suicidal body give forth? Our discussion of the suicidal body understands the body as a meaningful set of practices. My intention in addressing the suicidal body is not primarily motivated by a desire to discern Plath’s own reasons for succumbing to the call of nothingness. This suicidal bodily possibility presents itself as real within this poem though it is more hidden than in other Plath poems, ‘Lady Lazarus’ for example.15 The profound interconnectedness between the

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choice of suicide and the more familiar experience of the body in pain comes out more vividly in this poem than in Plath’s other work. The Moon and the Yew Tree does not name the suicidal but rather adopts a more spiritual silence concerning this possibility, a possibility that haunts contemporary society as Plath’s death also continues to haunt literary worlds and popular culture.16 In The Moon and the Yew Tree, the speaker’s attacks upon herself have been buried beneath the knowing exterior of linear lines that march forward despite the terribleness of what is being spoken. The wounded body beneath this exterior can barely rise and come into focus. We first see this wounding in the black and blue colors of the first stanza that merge with one another to produce bruises upon the page. She has cut this poem into her flesh and into the lines that appear on the page. The poem is an exercise in cutting. The speaker has been cut out of her home and writes in order to return home out of a longing for some sort of unity and wholeness that she can only find by naming the absence of being. A mood of sadness pervades and permeates our speaking of the poem. We fall with the speaker as she falls and descends into a way of speaking where word upon word admits of little distinction. Sounds multiply and blend into one another and we yearn for a resolution to the crescendoing cadences that build stanza upon stanza. We experience this releasing in the final stanza. At this point in the work, the lines of the poem bend and turn towards one another as the enjambment of lines unites the poem’s tensions with its actual naming of falling: I have fallen and long way and then we hear: Blue and mystical over the face of the stars [Over the face of the stars] Inside the church, the saints will all be blue, [The saints will all be blue] Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, [Over the cold pews] Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. (23-26)

The previous stanzas contain more lines that are end-stopped either within a line or at the conclusion of a line. The last stanza does not have a punctuated ending until the fifth line whereas the earlier stanzas have lines that come to a complete halt by the second line. The third stanza comes to a sudden silence immediately with the saying of the first line:

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The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.

We are introduced to the yew tree through the abrupt, staccato definitive description provided by the speaker. She stops her elaboration of this yew tree in order to bring us to the moon more quickly. This line ends abruptly. And we begin again. A beginning arises with the generalized eyes that belong everywhere and nowhere, these eyes, all eyes elevate, escalate, push forward across the horizon and seek out a different measure. The speaker seeks out this different standard in a different line by inscribing a new line with its own beginning and ending, entirely separable from the previous line that spoke about the yew tree. The third stanza is punctuated and punctured by these heavy four lines with definite endings, terminating points. They do not bleed and overflow into the space of the stanza. These lines that have been cut into the page immediately preceding the last stanza display the speaker’s deep penetrating relatedness with her own spoken voice. She articulates herself clearly and strongly, pushing into every inch of space in order to make herself heard. She pushes back and retreats into language in order to admit the terror of existence into her vocabulary. This language of the poem that can barely be heard, said, spoken, and yet this is the space where the unspeakable can be spoken. For Plath, the unspeakable is that there might be a connection forged between pain and the sacred life of words and between the pen cutting into the flesh of trees and poetic words on the page. The poem moves from black to blackness into silence as we traverse its atmosphere of boundarilessness.17 Irigaray names this experience dèrèliction: The term signifies their [women’s] abandonment within the social order where they represent the lost ideal of “home” or the ambiguous notion of the maternal body for men, but remain without the means to figure this loss and longing for themselves.”18 We are brought around these bendings into silence and one last reclining into this place of silence in the final stanza. The speaker’s ambivalence towards death brings her into relation with others. Martin Buber reserves the term tenderness for the mutual relating with others that arises when humans reach out through a happening of grace that cannot be found by seeking.19 Plath’s speaker

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seeks this kind of spiritual tenderness by going where she needs to go within the poem, not by forcing herself into relation with others. Our engaging with this poem allows us to think about the philosophical concepts of transcendence and immanence. The language that emerges from the body in pain and comes to its boiling point with the speaking done by the suicidal body brings us into sensuous contact with a transcendent dimension of human experience, what Long calls an “experience of ultimacy.”20 Experiences of ultimacy and transcendence are those mystical places where the unsayable is granted its own space and saying. Plath’s work concerns the place of the mystical within the quotidian world.

Facing the Other The Moon and The Yew Tree begins a meditation on hidden aspects of our bodily being. These hidden aspects are found in the depths of this feminine body in pain that gives birth to a refigured maternal horizon. In this poem, things that have been hidden are allowed finally to emerge, namely the sacred, nature, the gothic (monstrous), a feminine maternal dimension that is not sweet, origins, the rigidity of religious structures, and a black depth that is something other than complete darkness. What the transcendent can mean in a secular society, the ways in which this experience of ultimacy can presence during such a time emerge as critical questions within this poem. Merleau-Ponty leaves behind Husserl’s use of the terms transcendence and immanence for the more everyday inner and outer because these are not burdened with specific technical or theoretical meanings. M.C. Dillon argues that the central philosophical issue to which Merleau-Ponty work is a response is the transcendence/immanence dichotomy. So, our discussion of these terms goes to the heart of MerleauPonty’s ontology.21 In order to speak about the transcendent and mystical, she first avows that a dark crime has been perpetrated. We are moving towards a way of being where the transcendent and immanent fold in upon one another. Irigaray submits that perhaps we can understand the divine by fashioning a divine that would be an inscription in flesh, flesh comprised of a maternal

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body.22 Subjectivity and community require the help of the divine. Without this divine horizon, Irigaray contends that women are cut off from themselves and from one another.23 For Irigaray, how man relates to his divine impossible ideal, an ideal with whom man identifies, affects the way man relates with woman, the other whom he appropriates. “A subject can recognize and respect the specificity of the other, rather than appropriating the other, if an ideal horizon or genre reinforces the subject’s identity.”24 This appropriation occurs in part because of his sense of abandonment and distance from his own masculine-paternal God. He appropriates because he privileges reason and knowledge in opposition to those qualities deemed feminine (body, emotions, spirit). Plath’s poem shows the effects of this distancing when it is a woman who experiences a profound ambivalence toward her own body, emotions, and spirit. Plath retains the aspects of transcendence that enable the subject to experience aspects of existence that lie on the margins of rational experience. Yet, she struggles to articulate a divine that would be amenable with woman’s bodies and sexuality. Irigaray describes theological language and representations as marked by a split between the spiritual and the corporeal. The most spiritual and the most corporeal are imagined to exist worlds away from one another. Irigaray suggests that perhaps we can conceive of the divine in terms that reimagine women’s bodies and sexuality. She asks us to think about what has remained the most unthought in order to build what she calls a sensible transcendental. She speaks of a divine that would be “an inscription in the flesh.”25 This divine will have entered human nature as well as our relations with others who are different from us. Our being with others will not so readily fall into an appropriation that leads towards violence motivated by the desire to step across difference. Irigaray retains the word “transcendental” to refer to that which makes it possible for us to experience something. She links the word “sensible” with transcendental in order to indicate that this transcendental involves women’s collective access to culture, society, and language. Plath also sought a sensible transcendental through her poetice writings and her embodied existence.26 The Moon and the Yew Tree permits entrance into Plath’s developing sense of immanence within transcendence, her willingness to bring the

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spiritual into the corporeal. This poem shows that sheer will and determination cannot produce this sort of divine horizon if the conditions are not in place for encounters with the most radically other. Inner will and determination proceed from a stirring within the speaker’s own body. The flow of this poem is inwards rather than outwards. As the earth and environment have become unstable, the speaker directs her anxiety inwards upon her own flesh. The speaker remains unable to accept the indeterminacy of her situation. The speaker’s ambivalence towards her body contributes to her inability to move forward. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness--blackness and silence. (2228)

As we reach the poem’s last line, language finally stops and we can listen to something other than words, even poetic words.

En-gendering Sexes We have come through the suffering and writing of this speaker with an increased desire for the emergence of a divine that would be an inscription in flesh, in this case a divine marked upon a woman’s body.27 The speaker’s ambivalence towards her own feminine body enables us to ask what her suffering might mean for our theories about gender and sex when the source of much of this speaker’s pain arises from her situadedness as a body that undergoes pains and pleasures particular to the female body. This body is located within a social and cultural milieu, but it is crucial to recognize the influence of relations other than culture on our ways of being embodied as sexed and gendered creatures. These other relations include our connections with the non-human as well as the natural yet flexible and indeterminate body.28 Merleau-Ponty calls this body that allows us access to the world even when we remain unaware of this body the “natural” body. This body is “our general medium for having a

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world.”29 There are aspects of sex-gender that, while not predetermined by biological influences, merge with a system of relations that “give to our life the form of generality, and develops our personal acts into stable dispositional tendencies.”30 The speaker’s desires for a God other than the masculine God of the Western tradition arise out of her situatedness as a woman. Plath’s speaker has become distanced from the divine to such an extent that the poem leads us to the heart of blackness and silence. At least part of this speaker’s sense of alienation arises from her inability to develop a stable gender identity as witnessed through the speaker’s ambivalence towards the feminine markers in this poem: the body, the moon, night, Mary, the saints, and language. The speaker fuses this inability with the speaker’s distance from the divine. Poetic language displays how the lived particularities of bodies and speech can be articulated without collapsing into static one-dimensional essentialism. Speaking about the female body in this way risks essentializing the category of woman and feminine. However, embracing the feminine body in its lived particularity does not entail a damaging form of theoretical essentialism. This sort of essentialism has been rejected by feminist scholars because it denies that the natural is produced by the social. Essentialism becomes problematic when it universalizes the properties or qualities of a group or concept in such a way that an abstract essence becomes more weighty and real than any lived particularity or living being. Elizabeth Spelman explains that … “[E]ssentialism invites me to take what I understand to be true of me ‘as a woman’ for some golden nugget of womanness all women have as women, and it makes the participation of other women inessential to the production of the story.”31 The social constructionist embraces this domination of the social over the natural. It has often been assumed that essentialism is always regressive whereas constructionism is politically radical.32 Fuss deconstructs the simple dichotomies of essentialism and constructionism and asks whether they might influence one another. This leaves room even within antiessentialism for an embracing of those ways of being and acting that are essential, crucial and vital to women’s survival and flourishing.

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In our meditation with this poem, we learn that two phenomena of vital importance to women’s survival are poetry and some form of communion with the body as it appears in religious encounters. The desires of this speaker are not necessarily those of all women, of course. However, this poem does struggle to articulate experiences that might be shared by others at least in a way where the broad pulsings are capable of being shared, if not the entire message. Plath was deeply concerned with connections among women, for example the mother- daughter relationship in this poem.33 While these concerns are not the same for all women, they do share similar general outlines that can be accessed through the broad lines of poetic language. The speaker searches for a God capable of withstanding her falling, a God capable of seeing nothing yet still capable of responding to the speaker with tenderness, according to a logic that is founded upon a fundamental belief in tenderness. This logic of the heart could only take place after meanings and purposes have been stabilized, since this is required by a structure deemed logical.34 This is Plath’s metaphysics being brought to life. Her desire for particularity reveals itself in line 21: Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. Yet, there is something this speaker cannot find. I have called the speaker’s lack of contact her “unfulfilled spirituality.” This involves her desire for contact with an (other) who transcends human control and agency without dominating and controlling. This could be another who could hold the speaker’s griefs (first stanza) while still imparting tenderness. The speaker desires a God not merely who speaks in a different voice but one whose touch actually feels other than the touch of the God of the onto-theological tradition.35 For Plath, this would be a God who could be touched and respond with an interfolding of tactile sensations that Merleau-Ponty calls chiasmic. Merleau-Ponty’s important notion of the chiasm helps sketch out this relationship that Plath seeks more fully: “every relation is simultaneously holding and being held, the hold is held, it is inscribed and inscribed in the same being that it holds.36 Samuel Mallin unpacks this notion even further, telling us that the members of a chiasm are related “sinuously or flexuously by means of bending themselves to each other.”37 Our phenomenological study of Moon has traced several entrances into Plath’s work and has shown that

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Plath’s poetic concerns overlap chiasmically with important contemporary philosophical questions.

Notes 1

Parts of this chapter appeared in Releasing Philosophy Thinking Art: A Phenomenological Study of Sylvia Plath’s Poetry, Aurora, CO: The Davies Group Publishers, 2009. 2 Audre Lorde, Sister/Outsider, Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984, p. 37. 3 We will omit quotation marks around the poem’s title in order to emphasize our embodied relationship with the work. 4 This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumy, spirituous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. (1-7) 5 Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. 6 The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. (8-11) 7 The more familiar term for echoism, onomatopoeia, refers to words such as “hiss” “buzz” “murmuring” that verbally mimic their corresponding sounds. 8 This word can be pronounced with either a long ‘a’ or in a way that sounds like ‘gap.’ The sound of the second part of the word is secondary to the dominant ‘o’ sound of the first syllable. 9 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968, p. 147. 10 This differing separation of the lips evokes Irigaray’s more explicit use of the two lips in her depiction of female sexuality: “The hands joined, palms together, fingers stretched, constitute a very particular touching. A gesture often reserved for women...and which evokes, double, the touching of the lips silently applied upon one another. A touching more intimate than the one of a hand grabbing another” (Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 151). 11 Here we will attempt to articulate more creative ways of experiencing language, ways that disrupt our ordinary apprehension of the written and spoken word.

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A conversation with Professor Donald Riggs, Humanities Department, Drexel University, initiated my decision to include this transcription of the poem into its visual elementality. Professor Riggs affirmed my suspicion that the poem could be understood in this way at a time when I had not yet expressed this reading of the poem on paper. 13 See MacQuarrie’s In Search of Humanity: A Theological and Philosophical Approach, London: SCM Press, 1982. 14 This was Heidegger’s intention as well. Ultimately, he stopped writing “being” at all and instead crossed out this word behind a veil of crisscrossing lines that would hide this term from view. His later writings speak of the mysterious and sacred “It that gives” rather than being. This non-saying of being emphasizes Heidegger’s joining together of non-being with being: “This Nothing functions as Being” (Heidegger, Existence and Being, trans. Henry Regnery, London: Vision Press, 1956, p. 353). 15 The speaker in “Lady Lazarus” boldly announces to her audience: Dying/Is an art, like everything else./ I do it exceptionally well. (43-45) 16 We can create lists of names of contemporary writers who have taken their own lives rather than referring to the tragic fate of only a handful of artists. For philosophy the situation is different since the foundational figure of philosophy comes forth to us in the voice of one who chose to drink poison rather than oppose the Athenian government who had convicted him of crimes against the government and Athenian youths. The question as to whether this should count as a suicide is outside the scope of this book. For our purposes, it is important to note that Socrates’ death does approach the suicidal body. 17 This atmosphere of boundarilessness is related to the phenomenon of releasement described throughout this study. 18 Eluned Sumners-Bremner, “Reading Irigaray, Dancing,” Hypatia (Winter 2000), p. 98. 19 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, New York: Collier Books, 1958, p. 11. 20 Eugene Thomas Long, “Quest for Transcendence,” The Review of Metaphysics 52 (September 1998): 3-19. 21 M.C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. 22 Irigaray’s most explicit naming of the feminine divine occurs in her essay “Divine Women” in Sexes and Genealogies. 23 Irigaray, “Divine Women,” p. 64. 24 Penelope Deutscher, “The Only Diabolical Thing about Women...”: Luce Irigaray on Divinity,” Hypatia 9.4 (1994), p.105.

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Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference,” trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 147. 26 Cixous describes the precise link between the body and writing: “It is this hunger for flesh and for tears, our appetite for living, that, at the tip of forsaken fingers, makes a pencil grow” (Stigmata, 74). 27 We are beginning to speak about experiences that are nearly impossible to speak. Plath has been criticized for attempts to intermingle her own personal history with the historical event that is most unspeakable, the Shoah. It is not all together surprising then that she forges a connection and unity between the act and art of poetry writing and the act of cutting into one’s flesh. 28 The relationship between humans and non-humans will be examined in the next chapter on Plath’s The Arrival of the Bee Box. 29 Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception, p. 146. 30 Ibid., p. 146. 31 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, pp. 1-2. 32 See Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking, New York: Routledge, 1989. 33 She was also deeply interested in the female bodily experiences of childbirth, menstruation, and breast-feeding. Her journals and poems display a marked sensitivity to the everyday happenings within the body as evidenced by her descriptions of fevers, menstrual cramps, her miscarriage, and most profoundly the births of her two children, Nicholas and Frieda. 34 Carroll Guen Hart makes this point about logic in her article “Taking the Risk of Essence,” in Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality, New York: Fordham University Press, 1997, p. 95. 35 As Heidegger writes in an oft-quoted phrase from Identity and Difference, this would be a God before whom we can sing and dance, pp. 65-6. 36 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and Invisible, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968, p. 266. 37 Mallin, Art Line Thought, p. 243.

CHAPTER SEVEN COSMOLOGIES AND BODY POLITICS IN THE AMERICAS MONICA TOLEDO SILVA Sovereignty is a concept that inspires different interpretations when addressed to the aesthetic field of art and creativity. In this chapter, I introduce the idea of a sovereign body as applied to diasporic imaginations and nomadic aesthetics. Diaspora and nomadism are here explored as inherent indigenous qualities, and as ideas adopted by artists whose work deals with the dimensions of imagination in gestures and images inspired by Amerindian realities and their perspectivism. A sovereign body is the agent of its own being and of its own meaning. Brazilian artists Sandra Cinto (1968) and Morena Nascimento (1981), through painting and dance, explore Amerindian philosophies of life as creative ignitions, recognizing epistemologies of native peoples as an ancestral living, actual experience that we all embody and share. Some propositions of engaged existences and cosmologies show how artists work with nature and other living beings as signifiers and as sources for inspiring creative practices. Alterity is turned into a living dramaturgy, or an ecology of the self in never-ending imaging and aesthetic resource. Sandra Cinto is one of the painters who experiences a very specific mode of perception and creation to conceive extreme, delicate paintings on large canvases, sometimes transformed into performative objects—as, for example, her Sea Waves—that are exposed in the venue while she works on the piece, turning the space into her atelier–-a shared and performative work in progress—in order to offer a more sensitive approach to the subject. In this way, she is sharing her creativity as she experiences herself

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in relation to her themes: the universe, the stars, the lights of the night sky, and the ocean, resulting into a single embodied and sensuous, living image. To differentiate water from air and/or time from texture demands that we engage in these exchanged experiences with space itself and with an awareness of the concept of that which is sublime, transcendent of individual existence.

Fig. 1: Noite de esperança (series), 2006.

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Fig. 2: Untitled, 2010. Fig. 3: Mar azul e poeira de estrela, 2020

From Mexico City, Irmgard Emmelhainz (2016) asks: “Why do we continue to uncritically uphold the ways in which to organize knowledge?”. Forms of knowledge ignored by modernity may be explored through non-western epistemologies in order to question disciplinary boundaries imposed by modern science; the majority of peoples have epistemologies rooted in embodied knowledge, he adds—tuned with Haraway’s1 notion of “situated knowledges” (in opposition to scientific epistemology). Leanne Simpson explains: In order to have access to knowledge, we need to completely employ our bodies: our physical beings, our emotional “I”, spiritual energy and our intellect. Our methodologies and forms of life must reflect these components and integrate them into a whole.

Amerindian artists show methods, medias and languages in works driven to painting, installation and sculpture connected to site specific and

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performative objects (wearable, made from natural materials or thought to be manipulated). As a body performs its own subjects, enunciations become at once singular and shared. On this same sphere, culture does not belong to a place but to a body. We carry culture with us as we think and express ourselves through our vocabularies of gesture and image. A body also reinvents itself and creates its own meanings based on what is perceived, assimilated, on how realities are processed in our minds; we make ourselves present with our pasts and futures in embodied images of simultaneous patterns. Body texts are generated by successions of simultaneous states, in a way that it produces new meanings and connections in a given environment. Corporeality acts in states of presence that do not necessarily communicate, nor generate immediate meanings. The sense of being in the world enables us to evolve in inter-semiotic and multicultural translations, activating diverse aesthetics in modes of existence through connections made available from singular experiences. Reality and its modes of existence engages in new territorialities, in new ways of interacting, occupying, sharing and negotiating space. The natures of visibility these bodies present in their gestures, voices and images have something to do with cosmovisions, modes of living in diasporic existences able to offer insights to discuss the body out of mapped configurations and given frontiers, as if connected to a broader sense of art and life. Art production help us think and share a common world as it attests reality in its wide aspects, bringing powerful understandings to phenomenological contexts, from philosophy to body politics and cultural studies. Decolonial thinkers help us rewrite inclusive perspectives of production, media choices and exhibition formats. A variety of artistic works also generate other possibilities of communication, through affective perception and commitment to all forms of being. Visibility processes, the forms through which we share our experiences, include impermanence and a multitude of inner actions. Subjectivity refreshens stablished knowledges of defined humanity and scientific fields

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as communication, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and social sciences, in an ever-increasing complexity. The production of knowledge attests unescapable intersections of distinct theories as epistemological procedures for both art and body. Body narratives are embedded with memories and exchanges always recreated in the present, configuring unique repertories. A performative thought is extended to all sorts of visibility procedures, as briefly commented in visual arts and next in contemporary Brazilian dance. Our body, a multitude affected by its own temporalities and spatialities, also acts from subjects of our own nature, as we reinvent ourselves in ever new modes of presentation. Visuality “promotes non-linguistic statements and possibilities of shared realities” (AMARAL, 2017:34). Experimental languages are intersected with narrativity, mediation and sensation. To move through different territories adds us a sense of belonging which is distant from identity as a fixed concept. The way we create and communicate thoughts, feelings and gestures act as a presentation of a mode of presence. Presence has unpredictable configurations in art languages and in articulation of singular subjects. A certain subjectivity gives way to what survives in actions, operating in unpredictable configurations. Wide ranges of singularities are expressed in forms of body states, recreating multiple states of presence through which we perform ourselves; the plasticity of a living body affords a diversity of biographical narratives. A body dramaturgy is a complex of singular forms of self- presentations. It shares an instant form through an aesthetic that addresses our senses. Reality becomes reinvented and embodied living experience, and an active perception of self in dialogue with the context. Dramaturgy as performativity, creative actual action. Performativity as a dramaturgy of affection and lived experience. A growing awareness of the political, historical and multiplied reality destabilizes a common sense of existence, and attracts us to a regime of visuality committed to increasingly peculiar aesthetic momentary solutions. The image format (photography; video; dance, paint, as a mode of body

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exposition) is unimportant; the form within which the body image presents itself matters - the form in a chosen media enunciation and presentation choice of mediation. To the Guarani (Brazilian Indigenous people), our bodies, in its ecosystem. are affected by varied forces at every instant. Embryos of the world, carriers of future living beings, demand us to create other modes of existence, says Suely Rolnik (2018) in her theory of a microforce affirmation of life against a colonial-capitalist domain. “We search for a balance in a reactive micropolitics”, she argues, “extirpating from our conscience the strangeness, and by that, draining our vital pulse”2. A micro is a vital balance and a distinguished politic. The unconscious would then be this fabric of worlds, connected to this time, so that life can recover an equilibrium: that would be the task of an active micropolitic. Our subjective experience is what in us “defines” forms of existence and dynamics, through perception and cognition. From the subjective perspective, the other is an external object which produces in us emotions which we associate to representations from our repertory situating ourselves but separated from our experience out of the subject3, “a form of the supposed self in which we are temporarily embodied”. Rolnik argues: The production regime of unconscious4, drained from its ethic curse, produces “new worlds” to multiply sceneries of investment and accumulation of capital. The global colonial-capitalist micropolitics - has the unconscious as a target. To transform the actual state of things demands an interference in the micropolitics sphere, decolonizing the unconscious. To reconnect ourselves in the modes of subjectivation demands transdisciplinarity, a kind of potency that includes thinking production: to reconnect ourselves with a proper knowledge to our living being condition. Cultural and artistic microuniverses, in which relations fresh forces get strength, with its sense and value.

An idea of politics in art and body enunciations concerns identity as something connected to life as a whole: an expanded and singular body. Brazilian scholar Manaijè Karajá offers a sense of interculturality and transdisciplinarity, that would weaken conflicts, favoring minority groups5. Dynamism in its many living worlds, as understood by many

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Indigenous peoples, and epistemic diversity supports all human patrimony of life. (SILVA (1), 2017). There is no enduring sense of origin for what is miscegenous, but instead a net of continuing processes of organization. The idea of a form of life, the idea of self plays out body politics in every instances of existent practices: temporarily embodied in continuous happenings, as if offering a net ever unfinished of different individuals.

Dancing the Landscape: embracing the expanded body Ailton Krenak and Bolivian Pablo Solón call for a cosmopolitical concern that arises from scientific, historical and philosophical fields that point to a decolonizing nature. A sense of belonging and of sharing a space that is collective and overrules identities (as nationalities) and political frontiers. This vast notion of belonging extends to territories a mode of existence more aware of its surrounding environment. Krenak demands us to think of the space as a cosmos, arguing that there are hundreds of narratives of peoples who are alive telling stories and teaching us. He pleads: “we are part of the whole. Let’s feed our subjectivities, our visions, poetics of our existence. We are not the same and it is wonderful to know that each one of us is here and is different from the other, like constellations.” Amerindian cosmologies are very diverse, as it can be expected due to the continent’s vastness. Amazonian cultures, which also differ among themselves, share understandings related to what is called by Viveiros de Castro and T.S. Lima (1996) “Indigenous Perspectivism”: the beginning of life on Earth witnesses all beings living as peoples, sharing different humanities (in a way that opposes the famous saying that in our depths we have an original animality, latent: in truth all life would have in its depths a humanity). Homo Sapiens would not add an ontological or cognitive layer upon previous life, but commute wisdom with other species. Everything was human but everything as not one: humanity was a multiform multitude presented in a form of internal multiplicity, which external morphology – that is, the specie – is precisely its material cosmogony narrative: it is nature getting apart from culture (and again not

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the opposite as we learn from anthropology and philosophy in general, culture having being separated from nature). Other humans and other humanities would share our living experience in an ethnographic present time, in an ethos present, opposed to the historical present, having had a start – when (erratic, unorganized) living beings stop their being an other (in devir) in favor of an ontological unity. After this era of transformations – a common expression among Amazonian cultures – these original unstable beings have adopted those forms and habits of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and so on, which they became to be. Ex-humans would maintain a human virtuality in its mineral, vegetal our astral state or appearance. Their latent humanhood would show up in the forms of disease, dreams, hunt incidents, in which humans would be reabsorbed by the pre-cosmological subtract where all differences continue to communicate among each other in a chaotic way. The ethnographic present actualizes itself maintaining the necessary dynamism and difference of this remanence, in a mobile time, providing infinite speeds to the living societies, in extra-historical times. What we call the natural world, the world in general, would be then a multiplicity of multiplicities intrinsically connected, of species conceived as other peoples, that is, as political entities. Individuals acquire a subjective dimension more or less pertinent in our interaction with them, perceived as a society, a political and collective alterity. There would be many more societies (and therefore humans) that we can imagine, an international arena, a cosmopoliteia – in a way that what we call environment is actually a society of societies, with no difference between society and environment as if they were subject and object: all object is an other subject, always more than one - giving the “everything is political” expression a radical literality. Viveiros de Castro comments, in this brief resume of his book’s passage (2014:89-95), that it is not about a simple difference of cultural visions or vision of natural world, as described by modern sciences, nor of imagined cultural worlds by a same human species (ours) between our humanity and theirs; both sides of this equation need to be modified simultaneously, not because they correlate but because the correlation we imagine looses its

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meaning when translated to the Amerindian terms. This is the Amerindian Perspectivism. The chosen term to designate a very common notion in Indigenous America: each existent species sees itself as human because what it sees of itself is an image or an eco of the ancestral human condition of all beings. The extreme corporeal form is the way it is seen by other species (its “cloth”). Humanity is therefore at once a universal condition and an auto referential perspective.

Sovereignty in imagined Realities Dudude Hermann, Morena Nascimento and Thembi Rosa are Brazilian choreographers who experiment gestures affected by the environment of natural spots. Embracing sounds, colors, movements and atmosphere they compose a grounded body who breaths and engages to these common existences sensously. As many other dancers who work from these fields of inspiration, these artists further a mere reference for their works, by living and being committed to nature in their everyday life, composing from this engagement their choreographies. All living in Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas Gerais)’s surroundings and with formal classical dance backgrounds, Dudude mixes Indigenous seeds painting (urucum) on stage, where she also acts, afterwards leaving to the woods and disappearing - the backstage of her own glass theatre located in the very bottom of a mountain (in Sublime Travessia, 2017); Thembi mixes technology with windy branches and insects’ living inspirations to perform a body in dialogue with all sorts of life and moving spots. She also explores the wind with a bamboo (as in Parquear series), crossing beaches and cities worldwide. As Morena, both Dudude and Thembi dismiss a formal previous choreography and rather dance within the giving and chosen elements, as inspirational signs which impose and generate the next gesture. Morena Nascimento has chosen a familiar countryside to compose her latest pieces (as Bonina, 2021), in company of her little daughter Mia who, as trees, hills and paths, acts as interpreter. She explores Amerindian and Afro sounds from Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Minas in several works which have in common an active perception able to embody all live movements,

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into dance and scenery. What is configured as an art piece and an aesthetic choice has much to do with life in expanded senses of belonging.

Fig. 4 and Fig.5: Performances by Morena Nascimento. Ebó para Eusébio, 2020.

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For Krenak (2019:24;32-1) what matters are our “ecologies of knowledge”, our experience as a community. “We resist by expanding our subjectivity”, by not accepting the idea that we are equal. To sing, dance, and to live our magic experience of “lifting the sky” is common in many traditions, he remembers. To amplify our horizon, to maintain our visions, our poetics about the existence: to have diversity. Brasil has still 250 ethnicities and more than 150 languages and dialects. Diversity is up to now only a manner of homogenizing and taking out our happiness of being alive.” Krenak (2019:52) demands that we communicate a practice that is perceived in different cultures and peoples, and to recognize the institution of the dream, not as an oneiric experience, but as a discipline related to the formation, to cosmovision, to tradition of different peoples who maintain in the dream a road of apprenticeship, of self-knowledge about life, applying this knowledge in our interaction with others and with the world. This embodied sense of belonging, connected to the environment instead of to a specific site, allows a relation to art as part of life as a whole instead of a product of creativity or research aimed to be shown, exposed or sold. Indigenous diversity of craftworks, originally aimed for their own use, in rituals, festivities, food and daily living practices, have become products for tourists and/or for exchange to things they could not make themselves, along the centuries. Art then started to be called as such and slowly joined the “western” markets as well as slowly caught the attention of officially called artists themselves for the otherness of materials, visual shapes and colors, and ways to present, narrate, address divinity, gods, life itself – cosmologies.

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Fig. 6 and Fig.7: Thembi Rosa at home, 2022.

An “art of living”—shared with other subjectivities, beings, and qualities unnamed—as a practice of freedom that generates a renewed experience, is what Korean Byung-Chul Han (2018:106) confluently demands. “The practice splits the subject and frees it from its subjection. These happenings present ruptures and discontinuities that open up to new spots of freedom. There is a breaking of a dominating certainty that invokes a constellation of the being completely different.” Happening (the inversion of a relation of force) in its radical singularity. (HAN, 2018:105). Since art is a multimedia language and a multicultural field—as this approach evokes—our body will be its very resource. A certain performative presence circulates among artist who explore their miscigenous identities, fused in ancestral heritages both traced and imagined, and whose experiences of nomadism and displacement come out as invitations to wonder about our own histories.

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Simultaneously, due to the social impositions brought about by last year’s pandemic, a growing awareness related to the environment and our surrounding have turned more visible as more artists approach the living experience in a growing, intentional gesture through natural locations and materials, taken as characters, scenic signs, and all enunciation qualities of presentation. No longer isolated in rehearsal or other studio venues, dancers and visual artists assume a position of relational presence and bring us works less committed to a previous proposition and more interacted to what is available, perceived and sensed. Perhaps aesthetic practices and shared existences are here to propose a living practice connected to an expanded commitment to nature, art and the body. The living experience among Indigenous Brazilian peoples is considered, in a big deal, nomad. Even though settled, the moving practice has always been present, from the hunting to the agriculture practices – once the land is seen as a living being itself, the very earth, it needs to rest in order to recompose its nutrients and its own life (in turn giving life to minerals, plants, therefore animals, in a cycling movement), meaning people move every few years. Decolonial studies have continuously been showing increasing potential to overcome traditional knowledge as taught in cultural and scientific environments over the last centuries in the so called western countries. Through America continent diversity in art has been gaining more importance and visibility through more inclusive art venues, as virtual galleries, independent curatorships, artists groups and initiatives that grow from organizations free from institutional weights during the last decades growing demands for more “minority” groups exposure – LGBTQIA+, women, Indigenous peoples, African-Americans, current refugees, black women – have started to exhibit, approach and generate new connections to integrate these various arts no longer seen as secondary. Various studies from contemporary philosophy, culture, semiotics, cognition, also contribute to a continuing growth of interest and demand for diversity in a broader sense: further than a cultural background, more than a dialogical piece exploring two or more art languages at once, stressing hybridisms which are present since much earlier than performance

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and installation, reassuring specificity only as a choice, since art is born as a multimedia dispositive itself, as we easily figure out when visiting artists’ works from the Eighteenth century or earlier: diversity appears as an original insight, a quality of the body. Diasporic imaginations give way to ancestral memories, dreamed, imagined and desired. A sense of shared reality gives way in paintings and choreographies much affected by embodied awarenesses. The notions of a world which is not only visible and of a place that is not only physical have gained ground in contemporary exhibitions and propositions in even big venues as MAM (Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo) and Bienal de São Paulo, with their 2022’s editions named “Underneath the ashes, embers” (Sob as cinzas, brasas) and “It is darkened, still I sing” (Faz escuro, mas eu canto), respectively. The Bienal showed a large number of Indigenous artists, among them Nayara Tukano, who brought with her paintings the traditional belief of the Tukano people of coming to the museum together to present the pieces - she brought her relatives, who sang, danced, ate, saluting both the Gods and the arts. A performative presentation of being part of a whole, as one: the body, the paints, the place, the songs, the dance, the motives of the canvas, the motives of the cloths. A world that is re/created, remembered, greeted and honored in images and gestures that fuse a previous scholar education, academic teaching, field research and practice, for “white artists” affected by these realities as a creative source they will negotiate with their knowledges, approaching other forms of life, including the nomadism condition – which is connected to an understanding of carrying less luggage, in all senses, to create something new. Amerindian cosmologies will finally bring an aesthetic at once embodied, singular (individual) and connected to the whole (surrounding, environment and context), to artists who not necessarily (or directly) have an Indigenous background but who add this vocabulary to their repertories. Diaspora, the displacement condition of Amerindian peoples, the quality of nomadism, acquire ever anew forms of dialogue of the body and its

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imaging and gesture configurations in this widened reality where I and the other are one in a third space, embraced and connected. Politics of the body is inherent in language and in all formal state of presentation which separate being from the doing. Morena embraces her daughter in one of her choreographies because the little girl came on the “stage” (a wide green backyard) spontaneously and would not leave; Dudude paints her face with a red seed because the plant is grown at the bottom of a mountain and casts an image in the studio; Thembi changes her gestures because the sun is there behind her in a golden splendor not to be ignored. A body dramaturgy connected to its surroundings is a mode of presentation of an actual embodied experience, a performance of the visible affected to the present where a sensitive perception gives way to an acting procedure in which all intentions, trainings, memories, routes, and trajectories are most welcome.

Notes 1

In Haraway, “Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective”, Feminist Studies v.14 n.3, 1988, 575-99. 2 In the capitalist-colonial regime we loose the access to our condition of living beings, in which is given the experience of this subjective production addressed as “out of the subject”, according to Rolnik (2018:14). Affection is taken as an effect of forces and its relations that agitate the world’s vital flux singularly cross its bodies, making them one only body in continuous variation. The other, human or no human, would live in our body in the form of affection, producing seeds of worlds in virtual state. Apart from this experience we cannot evolve a living knowledge, or eco-ethologic knowledge. Without this access to our living condition, intrinsic to the subjectivation politic of a capitalist-colonial regime, subjectivity tends to be reduced to its experience as subject, proper to our socialcultural condition, and forged by its imaginary. 3 Byung-Chul Han (2019:17) considers the experience of atopy of the other: “to perceive the other in its alterity and to recognize it”. Eros would allow the other in its alterity, without the “invisible violence of positivity.” 4 The “western” would establish itself as the world’s political, artistic, cultural, intellectual, scientific authority, leaving a considerable part of humanity (Arabs; Africans; Asians; Indigenous peoples, Amerindians...) to the position of semi-

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humans. A perverse logic of this classification is embodied in a visual regime of the white above all. (ROLNIK, 2018). 5 The actual political-monocultural Brazilian project strengthens the continuity of an idea rooted in a neoliberal and monolingual Occidental thinking; according to Maria Pimentel da Silva (2017:212), a diversity of knowledges “emphasizes an epistemic search for the development of intercultural perspectives, recognizing knowledges historically silenced.”

References Amaral, Lilian. Futuros possíveis: experiência e território em processo. Fortaleza: UFC, Vazantes v.01 n.02, 2017 Castro, Viveiros de; DANOWSKI, Déborah. Há mundo por vir? Ensaio sobre os medos e os fins. Florianópolis: Cultura e Barbárie, 2014 Emmelhains, Iirmgard. Decolonization as the horizon of political act4eion. e-flux journal v.77, 2016 Gomez, Pedro Pablo. Estética Descolonial. Fortaleza: UFC, Vazantes v.01 n.02, 2017 Greiner, Christine. Tokyogaki. Um Japão imaginado (ed.). São Paulo: SESC, 2008 Han, Byung-Chul. Agonia do eros. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2019 [2017] —. Psicopolítica. O neoliberalismo e as novas técnicas de poder. Belo Horizonte: Ayiné 2018 [2014] Krenak, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019 Rolnik, Suely. Esferas da insurreição: notas para uma vida nãocafetinada. São Paulo: n-1 edições, 2018 Silva, Maria do S. Pimentel da. Pedagogia da retomada: decolonização de saberes. Goiânia: UFG v.2, 2017 Silva, Monica Toledo. Migrant images: aesthetic imagination in experiences of displacement. Journal of Linguistic Frontiers, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 2021 —. Cosmovisions and politics in the Bauhaus and Amerindian bodies. In Fink, Katharina; SIEGERT, Nadine (ed.). Missing the Bauhaus. Germany: Iwalewa Books, 2022

CHAPTER EIGHT NATURE’S AESTHETIC LANGUAGE AND ITS INTERPRETATION IN THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE LINDA ARDITO Introduction The present chapter constitutes a philosophical inquiry into nature’s aesthetic language and the appreciation of its manifold facets as fostered and reinforced in the experience of its expression, whether this would be had in actual settings or virtual ones, including the photographic image. Informing this inquiry is commentary on the popular activities of nature walking, hiking, and the photographing of nature-themed subjects. By addressing such activities, I hope to underscore their importance not only in deepening one’s appreciation for nature and its preservation, but, perhaps, also in supporting one’s health and wellbeing. Additionally, I hope to show ways in which such activities in the out-of-doors can inspire, inform and reinforce artistic sensibilities and philosophical thinking, both of which can, in turn, enhance one’s appreciation for the natural world. The present inquiry is, of course, one among countless others that aim to promote a greater appreciation for nature and its aesthetic language, a language not fully graspable yet immediate in its appeal to the senses. It is an inquiry in which the present author undertakes to draw upon traditional and academic perspectives, as well as broader considerations and fields of inquiry. Moreover, it may be regarded as a journey informed by the present author’s visits to and philosophic contemplation of green spaces and rustic locales, and of selected photographic images captured while there.

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A meditative approach to a photograph’s appreciation is popularly called, “photo gazing”, an approach often credited with being of benefit to health and wellbeing. Not wholly unrelated to this is perhaps a less widely considered practice that, instead of promoting the meditative experience for its own sake, primarily fosters philosophical thinking. The latter practice is, of course, rooted in philosophy, as it would be accommodative of observations, contemplation and the posing of questions in an effort to more deeply probe dimensions of meaning. When looking at a given photograph in this manner, what does one see? Indeed, what is it to “see” when one philosophically contemplates an image? The answer would be contingent upon many factors, not least of which are those associated with the viewer. With a philosophical approach, to “see” in the basic sense would become a gateway to a different kind of seeing, a seeing that takes one beyond what is more immediately being seen. For example, to consider a photographic image superficially or to aim to evoke a meditative state while doing so would differ from its philosophic contemplation, where such contemplation would be a journey of sorts, a journey essentially devoid of preconceived notions or the anticipation of a specific outcome(s). Indeed the latter activity would be a deliberate and deeply considered one that would accommodate the freedom to allow for what invites itself to participate in one’s contemplation of a given image. In this way, such contemplation becomes a journey whose unfolding would foster philosophical narratives of meaning that might range from the mundane to the revelatory. Indeed, the photographic image could serve as a platform for philosophical contemplation, and thus for the dynamics of reflection and revelation. Though such a contemplative activity hardly precludes a meditative component, its aim is not that of meditation for its own sake. Rather, in the consideration of the photographic image, one contemplates it in a manner that might be described as adventurous, as one undertakes an uncharted, philosophical journey whose destination will always remain at least somewhat out of reach. Meditation for its own sake might offer such benefits as a “clearing of the mind”, or an easing of feelings associated with stress, so as to achieve a state of calmness and relaxation. No single definition or outcome would apply to philosophical thinking. It is an undertaking that might include

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meditative features, but its focus would be primarily upon the pursuit of meaning. By way of example, the present inquiry includes narratives relating to the philosophical contemplation of selected photographic images. Throughout, the present author takes into account the “artistic eye” by which facets of nature’s aesthetic language may be interpreted and the “artistic voice” by which they may be celebrated. In so doing, I hope to show how nature can become a platform for philosophical thinking and artistic creativity. I also hope to offer readers a journey of exploration that underscores the important place of philosophy and art in the appreciation of nature, whose coalescence of dynamic and sensorial factors inform its aesthetic language and reveal its interconnectedness with all things.

Nature and Humanity Nature may be described as both simple and complex. This also would describe our relationship to it. In Book VIII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates differentiates one group of humans from another, likening each to two types of metal. The first group is likened to the metals of iron and bronze, and is described as being inclined towards “money-making” and the “acquisition of land and houses”.1 The second is likened to gold and silver, and is described as not poor, but, more specifically, “rich in their souls”.2 Just as nature may be described in both simple and complex terms, the relationship of humans to it is likewise both simple and complex. It is also varied and variable. In antiquity, for example, concepts of nature and of god are closely aligned. For the Stoics, the rational and corporeal are imperishable, and nature and god are largely viewed as one and the same. In this view, nature and god would underlie all things and thus constitute the whole of reality. For the Neoplatonists, nature encompasses corporeal and visible forms, but is, itself, incorporeal and invisible. Not unlike Plato’s distinction between the two groups of humans, the pre-Darwinian evolutionist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) would say of human interests in nature that they are two-fold, being either economic or philosophic.3 The former would refer to those interests deemed useful, the latter, to those that would support the desire to know nature for its own sake, which, as Lamarck asserts, is far less commonly held.

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The complexity of the relationship of humans to nature is evident in that, on the one hand, we understand it to be fundamental to our existence; on the other, we can sometimes regard it as a phenomena occurring “out there”, apart from ourselves and our everyday lives. In this view nature would be regarded as a kind of repository from which to extract what is useful, with little or no thought to how such actions could produce potentially adverse effects. Yet this view can be understood more favorably, in terms similar to those of the second categories in both Plato and Lamarck—that is, where nature is sought out for its own sake. In this perspective, we would draw from nature for creative inspiration, essentially without impacting it adversely. Such inspiration might be expressed in any number of forms ranging from photographs, paintings and drawings to music compositions, built environments, and literature and poetry, to name a few. To experience nature in this way is to become more aware of it, more open to it, and more mindful of the importance of its preservation. But where might we find these facets of nature’s aesthetic language? They are everywhere, as nature cannot be divorced from the world in which we live, whether we speak of cities, suburban areas, or wilderness locales. Nature can inspire in profound ways. Yet why is this so? What is it about the natural world that inspires us? Why do we seek it out? Perhaps the short answer to these questions—though far more complex than it might seem on the face of it—is that we can be drawn to and inspired by the appreciable facets of its aesthetic language. The long answer to these questions continues to evolve. The scientific study of neuroaesthetics, for example, is shedding light on the neural bases for those processes associated with an artwork’s creation, perception and appreciation.4 It is a study that, in more recent years, can include considerations about the aesthetic experience. In Practice, such an experience would include the reading of nature’s perceivable aesthetic language, which might be described as the reading of dimensions of the very essences of which nature is comprised. Responses to this language can be nearly instantaneous and powerful, where, for example, having appreciated certain of its various facets, might enable one to delve more deeply into one’s own sense of self while also recognizing the indivisibility of nature and

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humans. Indeed, nature is indivisible from all life, and thus, too, from the life-death cycle. Our attraction to nature can take many forms, from “forest bathing” and “nature gazing” to gazing at “virtual nature” 5 —that is, nature-themed images/depictions. All are generally considered beneficial practices. A walk in nature’s more green spaces invites us to slow down, to breathe more deeply, and to experience simply being in the present moment. It can also foster or reinforce a powerful sense of self-rootedness. Indeed, to purposefully step out into nature is also to tap the self within. This is not to say that doing so would assure a deeper knowledge of self. Rather, it is to say that doing so might serve as a kind of key that unlocks one’s ability to be more fully present with the self, and, in this, to explore more deeply the question of self. Consider Socrates’ comment to Phaedrus: I can’t as yet ‘know myself’, as the inscription at Delphi enjoins. …[I] direct my inquiries…rather to myself, to discover whether I really am a more complex creature and more puffed up with pride than Typhon, or a simpler, gentler being whom heaven has blessed with a quiet, un-Typhonic nature.6

Our senses help us navigate the world, but they are, of course, limited, as, therefore, can be our understanding of nature. Nevertheless, nature inspires. Consider, for example, the concept of biophilia,7 which is based upon perceived interrelationships between dimensions of the fundamental nature of our humanity and our inherent attraction to not only nature’s “lifelike processes”8, but also to life itself. This concept extends to the creation of built environments, and is known as “biophilic design”9. Such architectural design reflects the interrelationship between humans and nature. It is based upon mediation between considerations of the protective/sheltering function of architectural spaces and those naturebased inspirations integrated into architectural planning and aesthetics.

Nature and Music The aesthetic language of music may be likened to that of nature, and may be appreciated in such studies as physical acoustics, harmonic analysis, music theory, music composition, musical form and analysis, and music

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performance. Their correspondences are also noted by philosophic and aesthetic studies. They are noted, too, in various accounts of the thinking of Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-495 BCE), and in the writings of such thinkers as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). For Pythagoras, number is the basis for all things. In this context, he would establish a connection between music and mathematics, where mathematical ratios define the relationship between sounded pitches. The languages of music and mathematics are universal, and may be said to relate to the aesthetic language of nature, a language whose visible dimensions of design may be appreciated. 10 Kepler’s Harmonice Mundi (Harmonies of the World) addresses the “design of the cosmos”. He proposes an interrelationship among mathematics, music, astronomy and astrology, explaining musical intervals and their relationship to planetary orbits in geometric terms, and putting forth his Third Law11. While the cosmos’ static features would have a geometrical basis, its dynamic features, or kinematics, would have a musical one. Already in Plato’s Timaeus, which presents an account of the formation, order and beauty of the universe, the smallest elements of the natural world are understood through geometry, where five regular polyhedra, or “Platonic solids”, mix with Empedocles’ four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. As to the harmony of sounds, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) believed that they follow the mathematical laws of Pythagoras. In this context, sound may be said to originate in and from nature, as sound waves move through the air, with each molecule of air vibrating back and forth, striking other such molecules in its vicinity and causing them to also vibrate in this manner. Fast vibrations generate a higher frequency, producing a higher note. Slower vibrations generate a lower frequency, producing a lower note. Consider also Isaac Newton’s “color wheel”, which appears in his book, Optiks (1704). In this work, Newton illustrates a circle divided by the notes of a musical scale, starting with D and ending at the octave D. These divisions would correspond to the representative colors of the visible spectrum of light. Thus, notwithstanding subsequent challenges to Newton’s theory, he recognized a correspondence between musical notes and color, both of which may be explained in terms of physics, which, in turn, would support their correspondence with nature.

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As may be said of the language of mathematics, the aesthetic languages of both music and nature are non-verbal and universal. Both may be described in terms of their influence in nearly instantaneously “speaking” to one’s emotions and sensibilities, and perhaps even striking to the very core of one’s being. Both also may be considered in artistic and scientific terms, which would nonetheless be inextricable from experiential considerations. This calls to mind a passage in Book I of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where he says that we can begin to discern both science and art through experience. 12 Moreover, the experiencer is, of course, inseparable from the experience. For example, both nature and art may be experienced as art in motion. The non-verbal component of their respective, aesthetic languages make them no less discernible, but it should be added that what would be discerned has all to do with the discerner—that is, the viewer, the listener, the sentient—in short, the experiencer. Consider, for example, the ancient discipline of rhetoric, where persuasion’s efficacy is reliant as much upon the individual(s) being persuaded as it is upon the rhetor. In the correspondence between the aesthetic languages of nature and of music, I am reminded of a passage in Plato’s Gorgias, where Socrates, speaking to Gorgias, says of rhetoric that it is “not the only creator of persuasion”,13 and that “other arts besides rhetoric produce this result.”14 The aesthetic languages of nature and of music may be described as transcendent of words—in other words, as a symphony of sorts. Moreover, nature’s soundscape may be counted among the considerations informing the intersection between nature and music. Furthermore, as music is a sonic and temporal art, nature is fundamental to its expression. In Plato’s Laws, the Athenian says to Clinias, Fire and water, earth and air…all owe their being to nature and chance, none of them to art.15

Time is a primary factor in a musical composition’s discernment. To speak of time in this context is to speak of number. Number is integral to music’s language, permeating all levels of its expression, from the underlying ratios of its sounded tones to its temporal and rhythmic elements. Moreover, if we take nature to include all phenomena inherent to the natural

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environment, then sound waves also would be included among our considerations of it. The study of the experience of sound in the context of a musical composition is the study of acoustics, a term deriving from the Greek “akoustos”, meaning “heard”. The term “acoustics” differs from “audio” in that the former is a reference to how one hears or experiences given audio signals, and the latter is a reference to sound in terms of its transmission, manipulation and storage. This distinction between how sound is heard or experienced and how it is transmitted, manipulated and stored demonstrates the importance placed upon the listener, the individual experiencer of the music. Sound, heat and light all produce measurable energy waves. We, too, are energetic beings, being impacted by and responding to other energetic forms. Addressing the place of humans within the broader dynamics of an energetic cosmos, philosopher and Roman senator Boethius (c. 470-475? CE-d. 524), in his De musica 16 , describes three levels of music within which number is manifested: Music Mundana, or the music of the cosmos; Musica Humana, or music’s numeric expression as exemplified by the form of the human body; and Musica Instrumentalis, or sounded music by means of musical instruments. In this context, it could be said that we, ourselves, are influenced by number’s expression in time and through space, as we, too, are energetic beings that are part of the broader, cosmic scheme. Indeed, Boethius would uphold the earlier, Pythagorean notion that all within the cosmos is in continual motion/vibration at varying rates of speed, and that, whether animate or inanimate, all is in vibration, sounding at specific frequencies. Given that we ourselves are energetic beings, perhaps it could be said that when we identify with and/or respond to facets of either nature’s aesthetic language or that of a musical composition it is in part because we innately recognize their respective energetic expressions. This might well explain such practices as forest bathing and music therapy, practices whose healthful outcomes would seem indicative of music’s correspondence to nature. Of course, all is in vibration, whether animate or inanimate. Visible movements associated with the former signify life. Indeed, it could be said that life is motion. Perhaps this partly explains why the expression of the aesthetic languages of nature and of music—the experience of the movements/vibrations that

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are components of their expression—can impart, inspire, and lend to health and wellbeing. Since earliest times, the sensorial dimensions of nature’s aesthetic language have fascinated humans. “Bird song”, for example, is thought to have inspired the development of human song. Nature is also a fundamental consideration in the architectural design of built structures. Take, for example, the concert hall, whose architecture would ideally support optimal acoustics by having been engineered according to considerations of acoustical physics, which would also take into account environmental conditions. In nature, there exists a complex mix of sonic vibrations, though not all would be appreciated, as only a small range of such vibrations would lie within the range of human hearing. Nature’s sound sources would include, for example, living creatures, weather events, and the various kinetic processes occurring upon the earth. In ancient western culture these processes are associated with the elements of earth, air, water and fire, elements basic to nature’s dynamics. Nature’s aesthetic language consists of a dynamic complex of distinct languages that coalesce to exponential effect. Color, for example, has its own language, yet it is also a component of nature’s broader language. It may, for example, be spoken of in terms of its hue, saturation and brightness, factors that can be important in defining its broader relevance in the context of nature’s aesthetic language. Nature’s sonic dimension, too, with its timbres, tempos and rhythms, is among the factors that would define facets of its “voice”. Nature’s aesthetic language is often described in such superlative terms as stunning, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, dramatic, magnificent, sublime and enchanting. The manner in which we appreciate its facets is contextual and subjective, being based in no small measure upon what we bring to its appreciation. Nature’s language might include such manifested contrasts as light and shadow, silence and sound, cold and hot, wet and dry, or growth and decay. It might also include such divisions as sky and earth, water and land, or valley and mountain. Moreover, it might include transitions, such as day and night, the seasons, and the tides. We might observe nature’s geographic elements, a basic example being the very

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earth of the ground, which constitutes a significant portion of planet Earth’s surface. Indeed, Earth is, of course, comprised of earth, which broadly includes a variety of elements, from soil, gravel and stones to boulders and mountains. Perhaps this would explain why we identify with the Earth as not only our home, but also the very source of our own origins and being. In Plato’s Epinomis, we read: “It is not so much from science as from a native instinct implanted by God that we all seem to have taken the soil in hand.” 17 In the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, Zeus had decided to destroy all of humanity by flood, and Deucalion, son of Prometheus, constructs an ark. One version of the myth has it that Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha survived the flood, arriving on Mount Parnassus. In Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the couple offers a sacrifice and consults the oracle of Themis to learn how it might be possible to repopulate humans upon the earth. In response, he and Pyrrha are told to cast behind them the bones of their mother, which they interpret as the stones of the hillside of “mother earth”. Deucalion throws down stones that become men, and Pyrrha, those that become women. The aesthetic languages of music and of nature are both defined by such features as color, shape, texture, and sound. They are also defined in temporal and spatial terms that contribute to one’s appreciation for their design. Indeed, Goethe is quoted as saying, “Architecture is frozen music.” Moreover, the acoustics of a live musical performance are dependent upon the natural environment and the spatiality of the performance venue. They are also reliant upon technological means related to sound mediation/amplification. Thus music’s aesthetic language consists of sonic, temporal and spatial factors. This also may be said of nature, whose temporal dimensions would include a complex array of observable movements, such as those behind geological changes, the phases of growth and decay, the flow of waterways, the migrations and movements of animal life and the visible markers of annual, monthly and daily cycles. Each phenomenon unfolds in its own timing and, much like a music composition, is a component of the collective, temporal dimension, here, of nature’s aesthetic language, a language in which its spatial dimensions, too, inform its design.

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Nature’s Inspiration Nature has long been a source of creative inspiration. Since prehistoric times, nature-themed works of art have constituted an important artistic and cultural narrative that informs the broader narrative that is our human story. Modern technology affords virtual access to parts of this story and to sites in nature that might have contributed to its inspiration. At the same time, it could be said that one might become accustomed to not having much if any direct access to rustic sites or other green spaces. With diminished appreciation for nature and its importance with respect to one’s very existence, one might develop the false sense of having somehow overcome it, leaving no particular need to seek it out or to value it for its own sake. To hold to such an illusion would be not only to limit a vital source of creative inspiration, but also to greatly compromise the quality of one’s health—indeed, one’s very life. This illusion is perhaps fueled in part by the powerful sway of everyday rationality, or what has been called “shallow rationalism.” 18 Such an outlook, while not inherently negative, could minimize or obscure the importance of intuition and creativity, which, ideally, would support the holistic relationship between mind and imagination, and, by extension, self and the world. In modern philosophy, the division of the world into “matter” and “mind”, which has been called the “Cartesian Catastrophe”, had become the basis for defining the mind solely in terms of conscious thinking. This division of “matter” and “mind” has been deemed by some as problematic.19 Perhaps it also could be deemed somewhat arbitrary if we take the view that matter and mind are rather more enmeshed than divided, and that the mind is so much more complex than what studies on conscious thought—notwithstanding their importance and great merit— have revealed thus far. As with a divided perception of the world, nature, too, can be viewed in more linear and rationalistic terms that perhaps limit our appreciation for the fullness of its dynamics. Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne held that nature resides within oneself. It would seem to follow, then, that seeking nature on the outside would reinforce its permeating influence on the inside, within the self.

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That nature can inspire creativity seems reason enough to seek it out. In so doing, it becomes possible to experience it as a kind of living work of art/art in motion. Nature inspires and draws us to itself, offering, ideally, health for the body, insights and creativity for mind and imagination, and inspiration for the soul. To experience nature more comprehensively is to be more attuned to its sensorial dimensions. Ludwig van Beethoven would often stroll in the woods for creative inspiration. His Pastoral Symphony is one of many of his compositions that would be inspired by nature.

Photographing Nature The camera is a great facilitator in heightening one’s awareness of and appreciation for the facets of nature’s aesthetic language. To read its language is to be in the moment of its reading, to experience and discern its facets and to perhaps in some way transcend them. The activity of photographing nature can, itself, enhance this process, as it necessitates focus upon and engagement with facets of nature’s aesthetic language. To experience such facets is, in a sense, to merge with the essences of this language—its sounds, scents, colors, shades, hues, intensities, shapes, contours, patterns, textures and contrasts, and the dynamics of its various cycles and life forms. A photographic image may be appreciated cursorily or with deeper purpose. The latter requires the application of philosophical thinking. Such thinking is a considered inquiry, a re-searching of the image, where greater depths of one’s inner voice are plumbed for insights. The etymology of “research” is from the Old French “re-” and “cerchier”, thus to “search again”. While searching and re-searching a photograph’s imagery, a virtual world might emerge, a world transcendent of its perceived surface imagery, a world that engages mind and imagination—that is, a world of ideas and of artistic inspiration. In the contemplation of this timeless space, aesthetic features can emerge and coalesce, bringing about a kind of symphony of meaning. We might ask what attracts one to a particular photographic subject? We might wonder how such a subject, interpreted photographically, can become a catalyst for a given interpretation and/or narrative. We might

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also wonder why, having contemplated an image, one responds in a particular way. When children enter that familiar phase in which they repeatedly ask, “Why?” we can reasonably surmise that they do so because they are innately curious. Curiosity is a major factor in the development of one’s creativity. On the way to adulthood and with the distractions of everyday life, the wonderment abundantly evident in childhood can recede. By contemplating a photographic image, a space may be accommodated for such wonderment, for this question of “why?”, among countless other possible questions. Doing so can also enhance one’s “critical eye”, which, in turn, can lend to insights into one’s own thought processes, creativity and interests. As with the experience of actual scenes in nature, nature-themed photographs can be awe-inspiring, and often deserve another look. If one is unable to venture out into nature, naturethemed images such as those depicted in photographs, paintings, drawings, and carvings can engage one’s aesthetic sensibilities. It can also fuel wonder and curiosity, characteristics rooted at the core of one’s being. The activities of walking and hiking in nature can be beneficial to health and wellbeing. Combined with appreciating facets of nature’s aesthetic language, these activities can greatly enliven the experience of nature and can foster an appreciation for its integrality with respect to all else. Indeed, from this perspective, one is not merely an echo of some facet of nature’s aesthetic language; one is a component of it. Just as nature may be understood as art in motion, all animate and inanimate objects are likewise in constant motion, their vibrations resonating at varying frequencies. Forests and other wilderness areas are rich with awe-inspiring narratives, but the ethos of our hurried, modern-day world can set a challenging stage for one’s ability to access and more deeply appreciate them. One way to perhaps mitigate this challenge is to cultivate or further develop an interest in photography. Indeed, in one’s attempt to capture inspiring images photographically, one’s pace is slowed so as to more purposefully consider photographic subjects from nature’s inspiration. This can be an enjoyable activity invigorated by experiential, sensorial dimensions—the scent of pine and/or jasmine, the sounds of bird song and/or the rushing waters of a brook, the sight of a majestic mountain, the combination of various colors and shapes, the shades of light and dark, and the feeling of the very terrain

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beneath one’s feet. Time spent in nature can invite a slowing of one’s pace, which, in turn, would afford the opportunity to breath more deeply and thus to quiet the mind. Perhaps with a bit of irony, this quieting of the mind can bring about a state of mindfulness, mindfulness that draws nature’s beauty into sharper focus. At such times, the stage may be set for more readily tapping the artist within, and for perhaps fostering a greater interest in nature and in photographing some of the limitless facets of its aesthetic language.

Photographer and the Photographic Image Nature is dynamic. So, too, is one’s interpretation of it. In photographing facets of its aesthetic language, the photographer can approach the imagery of the photographic subject in a manner that ranges from objective to highly subjective. In the latter, its meaning becomes transcendent of its more literal features. Moreover, to revisit a site in nature is, in a sense, not simply to return there, but also to visit anew. Doing so can inspire creativity in the discovery and interpretation of its changes, which, in turn, can heighten one’s impression of the passage of time. Familiarity can be reassuring, but our relationship to it hangs in a delicate balance. Indeed, it is common to find the need to “escape” from the everyday, to go somewhere different, whether that destination would be to the mountains or a metropolitan area. To “escape” connotes a certain extreme action. Its etymological basis is rooted in the medieval Latin, “ex-” (“out”) and “cappa” (“cloak”/“cape”). Thus it connotes getting out of one’s cloak/cape. The everyday can be easily imagined in metaphorical terms, where it is responsible for snagging the cape of an individual who, attempting to escape, gets out of it just in time. In this metaphor, the narrowness of the escape perhaps conveys a sense of desperation that implies that any and all other material possessions of the wearer would have likely been left behind, as they would be counted as not nearly as important as the act of escaping. Parting from one’s familiar environs can be restorative. To go on vacation is, at its root, an “escape” of sorts, as it implies a kind of fleeing from the familiar. Indeed, “vacation”20 is about vacating. Indeed, vacating is what is emphasized here, not the activity of arriving a destination other than home.

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To depart for a time can be a response to a self-generated invitation to step away from the familiar, to experience and more consciously participate in the eternal, cosmic dance of change. The philosophic contemplation of photographs or the activity of photo gazing might cultivate such an invitation, where, for a time, the everyday recedes in one’s imagination, renewing one’s vigor to again meet its challenges. Changes are realized in places both familiar and new. Observing changes by returning to given locales in nature offer visible manifestations of variation and inspire new and different perspectives. Variation is dynamic, and it occurs in what, superficially, could appear as repetition. On a broader level, the anticipation of future artistic endeavors are already embedded in any creative undertaking. Imagine—if it were possible—that, as a condition of our existence, we were only ever limited to encountering one work of art from among all those we presently enjoy and by which we may draw inspiration. Such a limitation would prompt certain questions. How would we feed our imaginations, our curiosity and our creativity? How would this affect the ability to more fully know the self or others? How might we see our relationship to nature and to the world? Nature’s aesthetic language could never adhere to such a limitation. Nature is dynamic, diverse, and changeable, and, as such, is a potent draw for artists, photographers, poets and musicians, among others. Experiencing facets of nature’s aesthetic language would differ perceptually and interpretatively from experiencing such facets in photographic images, or nature-themed representations in such visual media as film. Of course, compared to a motion picture, a photographic image is a celebration of an instance in time as opposed to a series of instances that unfold over time to convey an over-arching story. The captured instance of a photograph nevertheless has a story to tell, a story that comes to light by its contemplation—that is, by the active participation of the viewer. The artistic approach to photographing facets of nature’s aesthetic language quite naturally heightens one’s appreciation for it. It can also lend to a greater sense of wellbeing. Every step along the path to wellbeing is important not only in its own right, but also because it is integral to all other such steps. Of course, reading and photographing dimensions of

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nature’s aesthetic language would require openness to its contemplation. Moreover, with respect to photo gazing, unlike the manner in which one might treat the flood of images vying for our attention, requires purposeful contemplation focused upon a sole photographic image. The aim of such contemplation is to achieve philosophical, artistic and aesthetic insights. This would entail a more protracted and meditative approach, where experience and emotion coalesce with intellect and imagination. It would also be a more meditative activity, even as mind and imagination remain actively engaged. This approach is not about simply looking at an image. Rather, it is about looking into an image to discover facets of its deeper language and inspired meaning. During this process, as the everyday and the mundane recede, a state of mindfulness might be achieved, challenging certain preconceptions and beliefs, and inspiring a greater sense of connectedness to self and the world. Photographing nature-themed subjects can be about capturing a beautiful scene. But what defines beauty in nature? Nature’s beauty can be quite rough-hewn and, by more traditional standards, not necessarily considered beautiful. Moreover, it might be determined not only by certain facets of its aesthetic language, but also by what is brought to the process of its discernment by philosophic contemplation and artistic vision. When a photograph becomes the object of photo gazing it can invite one to apply both intention and mindfulness to philosophic and aesthetic considerations. A photographic image can also inspire narratives, including those that might recall certain memories. Memories are fluid, being constructed and often reconstructed with each instance of their recollection. For the photo gazer, nature-themed photographs can inspire effects similar to those experienced when at an actual site in nature. It might even be said that the experience of gazing at such an image is similar to that of revisiting a movie, play, novel, lecture or musical performance. Revisiting such works can inspire new insights and an appreciation for their timeless quality.

Cave Art and Oil Paintings Discovered in 1940, the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings, which are located in Dordogne, France, are largely imbued with mystery, as they

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seem to hint at a most fascinating yet not wholly deciphered story. It is a story comprised of two thousand engravings, drawings and paintings that depict animals and symbols. Some images were painted using pigments. Others were carved in stone and depict the relatively larger animals once native to the region. Human figures and abstract symbols also inform this curious story. Hidden from normal view, this exceptional gallery of prehistoric art indeed holds a mystery. Even in the time of its creation it would have been imbued with mystery, as its locale would have been far removed from the everyday. This cave art might have been lost to time altogether, leaving no possibility for the discernment of its meaning and intended purpose. Yet having found this art, the mystery remains. Perhaps this cave art was inspired by a belief that it would possess an energizing effect, an effect perhaps drawn upon in preparation for a hunting expedition. Perhaps the very activity behind their creation had already produced such an effect. We know that creativity or even exposure to creative works can be energizing. This likewise may be said of the creative endeavors that would constitute a celebration of nature. Moreover, nature itself could be taken as art in motion, a canvas from which to draw creative inspiration, or a subject for artistic expression, as, for example, in nature-themed photographs. In cave art, nature is an inextricable presence in the very stone surfaces that become as canvases upon which subjects are depicted. In naturethemed photographs, paintings, and drawings, nature has become as a canvas for its own artistic representation. Moreover, such creative expression can become something other than itself, something fundamental to the story of its own aesthetic inspiration, something transcendent of the domains within which art resides. Nature’s aesthetic language offers a wellspring of inspiration. Its interpretation often derives from what might appear as repetition. Inspired by his home garden in Giverny, France, Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) painted nearly two hundred and fifty works as part of his “Water Lilies” series. Between 1904 and 1906, French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) painted over sixty renditions of Mont Sainte-Victoire, which overlooks Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Born at its base, Cézanne had climbed it often, and is known to have painted his artistic renditions of

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it to the point of exhaustion, and some would say to the point of his own death. With each climb he had experienced the mountain anew. Likewise, for as many times as the mountain had become the subject of one of Cézanne’s paintings, its portrayals would not be understood as strictly repetitious, nor would he have considered them so. In literature, too, repetition can transcend the simplicity of its seeming, initial intent. Poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) exemplifies this sense from the perspective of both writer and reader, stating that, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”21 Wilde was a proponent of the movement of Aestheticism, whose philosophical foundations were formulated by Immanuel Kant (17241804). In literature and art, he recognized the importance of repetition. However, he acknowledged that it is not possible to repeat emotion in precise terms. This would suggest a correlation between repetition and transformation/variation. Wilde, in his essay, The Critic as Artist,22 notes as part of his aesthetic philosophy that rhythm and repetition are important to the aesthetics of art, the latter being a basis for expressing difference and transformation. The repetitious motifs found on the nearly two thousand figures carved into or painted or drawn onto the stone surfaces of the Lascaux cave suggest transformation. Thematic repetition in works of art can serve to suggest inherent variability. The aforementioned, naturethemed paintings of Monet and Cézanne would serve as examples. For the creative artist, repetition invites artistic variation, and variation becomes indistinguishable from transformation. Moreover, variation and transformation are implicitly dynamic processes that would seem to suggest to the artist/photographer/composer/writer that the completion of a work of art is, in some sense, arbitrary. Consider the following passage from Book VI of Plato’s Laws, where the Athenian says: …the painter’s brush never seems to have finished its work on a figure; it seems as though it could go on with endless embellishments of coloring or relief—or whatever may be the professional name for the process— without ever reaching a point at which the picture admits no further enhancement of beauty or vivacity.23

Repetition in nature-themed art can serve to inspire a sense of deep and even primal rootedness to and appreciation for nature’s inexhaustible,

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creative potential and thus also for the diversity of its expression. Whether in terms of photography, music, or art—including prehistoric cave art— repetition allows for limitless variation. To quote the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535 - c.475 BCE), “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”. In this view, each visit to a familiar locale would be experienced anew, as all is ever changing.

Contemplating Selected Photographs Every photographic image has a story to tell, a story set in motion by the photographer and discerned by its viewer, whether or not its viewer is the photographer. Of course, taking the viewer into account, such a story would be a necessarily fluid one. Indeed, it would be subject to development and variation with each instance of the relevant photograph’s contemplation. The discussion that follows is based upon selected, naturethemed photographs considered from philosophical and artistic perspectives. As would be true for the appreciation of any image, these selected images and corresponding commentary are not intended to suggest a singular or definitive interpretation. Rather, they are included here for the stories and insights they have inspired in me with respect to nature’s aesthetic language, and for how their accompanying commentary might shed light on a photo gazer’s journey. They are also included here as examples of the interrelationship between nature and humans, and for their potential value in demonstrating how philosophy informs art and art, philosophy. The meditative approach to photo gazing can be of benefit on many levels. It can have value in and of itself in this context, as can the artistic and philosophical approach to the appreciation of an image. The term “meditation” originates with the Latin “mederi”, meaning “to heal”, and “medicus”, “physician”. Moreover, the Latin root “med-” is “to measure, limit, consider, advise”—in short, “to mediate”. The Latin “meditari” is “to consider” or to “think over”. Thus meditation and mediation, or a striving for harmony, are not unrelated. Harmony is about the mediation/reconciliation of opposites and may be understood as a universally relevant concept. Mediation is also integral to the creative

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process, whether that process pertains to composing music, painting on canvas, or designing buildings, to name a few examples. To deeply connect with nature is to become harmoniously attuned to it and, in the process, to oneself. This recalls a passage in Plato’s Timaeus: And the motions […] naturally akin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. These each man should follow, and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, should correct the courses of the head […] and should assimilate the thinking being to the thought, renewing his original nature, so that having assimilated them he may attain to that best life which the gods have set before mankind, both for the present and the future.24

According to Plato, education’s goal is that of fostering a balanced approach to life. He thus proposes the study of gymnastics for the body and that of music for the soul.25 Today, too, we find heightened interest in activities that would promote and/or support a balanced lifestyle. Spending time in nature can be grounding and harmonizing. Hiking, nature walking and forest bathing are among the activities often accompanied by an inclination towards aesthetic appreciation and philosophical thinking. I am reminded here of the opening passages from Book I of Aristotle’s Metaphysics26: All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this may be observed in the delight we take in our senses.27

He says, too, that in addition to appearances and memories, humans live by “art and reasonings”28, both of which are fundamental to human nature and representative of approaches to both aesthetic appreciation and philosophical thinking. Nature offers a wealth of inspiration for capturing photographs that might be appreciated in philosophical terms. The very experience of nature, whether conveyed artistically, in the photographic image, or in other such representations can foster a profound appreciation for its complexity and simplicity, and for its transformational dimensions. As transformation in nature is a constant, it is, over time, what accounts for nature’s observable changes. Future visits to places of one’s photographic inspiration will be

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different. They will, however subtly, have undergone observable changes. It is often the anticipation of such changes that becomes the inspiration for revisiting such sites. Perhaps such visits are more aptly called arrivals, arrivals to where the familiar coalesces with the new.

“Stirring Reflection” © 2016 – Linda Ardito

Dusk was fast approaching when I captured the above photographic image titled, “Stirring Reflection”. Prior to doing so, I recalled a passage from the preface of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right: When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.”29

Contemplating the above photographic imagery, the “grey” of philosophy seemed to come into sharp relief against the interplay of light and shadow, and an ever-fading color palette. The owl of Minerva had begun its flight to the lofty heights of wisdom. The water’s appearance had transformed from clear to viscous, and soon there would be another manifestation of

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transformation. A mallard duck had disrupted the water’s reflection of narrow tree trunks, setting in motion upon the water’s surface a nuanced interplay of dark swirls and softly illuminated pools of light. Silence had descended upon the scene that now seemed to exude an ethos of sublime transformation, as if in celebration of nature’s limitless, creative potential. The above image seemed a reminder of transformation’s constancy, of the unique and endless combination of variables ever at play in all things. The mallard duck would likely return at sunrise, and I thought that I, too, might return the next day. Doing so, I would surely be met not only with a sense of the day’s sameness, but also its difference. Wrapped in the familiar, change finds its voice. In contemplating the photographic image below, titled, “Hidden in Plain Sight”, one might sense a call to search the meaning behind the human figure, which, though in plain sight, could initially evade notice, and thus, retrospectively, be regarded as essentially hidden within the scene. In accepting this invitation, one might soon be reminded of certain tests or games whose object is to find that which would be deemed as out of place or hidden within the scene. With a more narrowed focus, the human figure in the image becomes apparent. Yet its position within the photographic frame and the effect of its blending into the broader scene might be suggestive of its arbitrariness or displacement. Ironically, this, in turn, might become the basis upon which the figure becomes a focal point, particularly given the questions that might emerge from its placement within the scene. Is the figure to be deemed as arbitrary or displaced simply because of its position within the scene? The photographer, in planning the composition of the photographic frame, can sometimes find something unanticipated within it. Capturing the image below, my focus was initially upon the tree branches and the waters receding from a sandy coastline. However, just prior to photographing the scene, I noticed a human figure standing upon the jetty. My decision to capture the image with the figure was based upon what I should like to call artistic perspective, or the subjectivity of artistic perception. In this view, the figure blends with the tree as if it is another of its branches, which, themselves, artfully blend as a kind of canopy that frames the scene. The

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“Hidden in Plain Sight” © 2016 ~ Linda Ardito

figure, being closely situated near the tree branches, would seem to suggest that which is “hidden in plain sight”. Within this hiddenness could be heard a call to philosophic contemplation. On the one hand, the figure

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blends with the scene. On the other, it becomes a focal point owing to its initial hiddenness and its out-of-place-ness with respect to the scene as a whole. If the photographer would intend the figure in the image to be a focal point, then a more obvious contrast between subject and background would typically be sought. Even so, as mentioned, the figure becomes a focal point precisely because of its seeming hiddenness and out-of-placeness. In the planning phase of choosing the subject for my photograph, the figure seemed to suggest incorporation as opposed to accentuation or division. Indeed, the figure seemed to harmonize with its surroundings, as if it was just another of the tree’s branches. At the same time, as mentioned, this is precisely why it might also be perceived as a focal point. The tensional duality of this harmonizing effect of the figure and its surroundings juxtaposed with its out-of-place-ness amongst the tree branches is what had inspired me to photograph this scene. Either facet of this duality can present itself to the viewer of the image, but it is perspective that informs and determines which facet it would be at any given moment. Contemplating the human figure and the tree’s branches invites one to see their integrality and indissoluble relationship to nature as a whole. A “trick of perspective” further underscores this in the leveling of dimensional planes, as can be found, for example, in the two-dimensionality of certain traditional Japanese artworks, especially their woodblock prints. Such works have inspired Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, from Van Gogh and Gauguin to Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. In philosophically contemplating the above image, any number of stories might emerge. One such story might be about the place of humans relative to that of nature. Another might be about the harmoniousness of nature, and thus the naturalness of living harmoniously with and within it. More broadly, the image is perhaps suggestive of the notion that to harmonize is to unify. From this perspective, nature might be understood as selfgenerating, and as a fundamental cause for all else. Insofar as the element of change is a constant, this condition of oneness or harmoniousness of nature perhaps recalls the three basic principles of the metaphysics of Plotinus (204/5-270 CE), which is partly based upon Plato’s “Idea of the Good”.30 Plotinus broadly refers to his three principles as “the One”31. As

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a first principle, the One is both self-generated and the cause of being for all else in the cosmos. In this light, we might imagine that the above image is representative of a story about a singular, harmonizing moment within which may be glimpsed the whole of the cosmos. In more immediate terms, we might imagine that the image is evocative of a story about the disproportionality of our adverse impact upon nature and the planet. Such a story would raise any number of questions: What is nature? How do we see ourselves relative to it? What is our ongoing impact upon it, and how, then, would we be impacted by it? Broadly speaking, the simplicity and complexity of nature may be said to combine as a feature of its “oneness”, a feature never wholly discernible. Indeed, only facets of its meaning may be grasped. In this light, the human figure in the above image is perhaps suggestive of humanity’s relevancy and constituent role within a far broader cosmic scheme whose true nature remains hidden. In planning the photographic frame, the photographer might already be imagining an accompanying narrative. Doing so, the photographer becomes not only the initial viewer and philosophical thinker behind the subsequent photograph, but also a symbol of the choices we might conjure for not only the framing of photographs and their innumerable stories, but also for what meaning might be drawn from them with respect to one’s life, the lives of others, or, more broadly, of humanity. How do we see ourselves? What is it that we choose to include within or exclude from the frame of our lives? As with the subsequent photographic image, our lives present an openended invitation for contemplation, and for framing and reframing. Contemplating the above image in a philosophical context would not necessarily include a focus upon compositional “errors” according to the norms of traditional photography, though such findings might be had, of course. If it were to include such a focus, then the human figure could easily be seen as displaced or extraneous relative to its surroundings. Yet in this very interpretation the figure also becomes a focal point, one that might inspire any number of stories. For the photo gazer, such stories might be based not solely upon what is observable in literal terms, but also upon what is inspired by the mind’s eye. Nor would such observations and inspirations be immutable. Indeed they would be susceptible to change and could resonate well beyond the moment of their initial inspiration.

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“Setting Sun” © 2019 ~ Linda Ardito

The section of the present chapter subtitled, “Cave Art and Oil Paintings” includes discussion about the varied richness of interpretation with respect

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to facets of nature’s aesthetic language. It also includes discussion about how such interpretation might be informed by what, more superficially, could appear as repetition. Claude Monet dedicated twenty years to painting his “Water Lilies” series, which consists of nearly two hundred and fifty renditions of his home garden in Giverny, France. In 1908, he, himself, noted that his paintings of water and reflection had become for him “an obsession.” In actuality, this obsession had begun prior to any of his efforts to paint the works in this series. Indeed, it had begun in 1890, with the purchase of his Giverny home and an adjacent parcel of land. He lived at the home for forty-three years, drawing upon facets of nature’s aesthetic language to design his flower garden and Japanese-inspired water garden. Characteristic of the Impressionist movement, he conceived of both gardens as dynamic works of art conveying the beauty in nature. He designed them to appear quite natural, and painted his impressions of them with the aim of evoking a sense of harmony between humans and nature. Ultimately, he would call his “Water Lilies” series his “finest masterpiece”. Paul Cézanne, too, could be said to have had a kind of obsession with his art. He painted over sixty renditions of Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain very familiar to him, as he had been born at its base and had climbed it often. In these works by Monet and Cézanne, repetition had become— perhaps with a bit of irony—the basis for rich and varied treatment that would convey dynamism both collectively and within each work. Elements of repetition and variation are likewise found in both the above photographic image titled, “Setting Sun” and the previous image titled, “Hidden in Plain Sight”. In “Setting Sun”, a figure stands upon a jetty, the “same” jetty that appears in the previous image, though photographed three years later. Despite the “same” environs and theme of a lone figure within the scene, the two images differ owing to a necessarily incalculable range of variables from atmospheric, environmental and temporal differences to perspectival ones, among others. Prior to photographing the above scene, I thought about how the sun would soon be sinking below the horizon, and how the individual upon the jetty seemed in no hurry to depart for a wider swath of terra firma. The blanketing effect of a thick cloud cover seemed nurturing, as if in quiet anticipation of night. It also seemed to amplify the scene’s dark cast, as if in collusion with the setting

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sun to blot out the daylight. Indeed a certain tensional relationship seemed to emerge between the light and the darkness, a relationship reinforced by the precariousness of the figure remaining upon the narrow jetty of rough, uneven stones. Night’s impending obscurity seemed to exude an ethos of transformation from certainty to uncertainty, even with the emanation of a uniquely diffuse and awe-inspiring light. The sky and water appeared tranquil, with not even a seagull in sight. The individual was yet upon the jetty, but it now seemed as though the overtones of uncertainty were giving way to a more peaceful sense bound up in the subtle moments of solitude, moments filled with an intermingling of the sublime and the trepidatious. The above image might be interpreted as a celebration of the experience of solitude. By contemplating this image one might further contemplate the experience of solitude. How might we understand solitude? What is offered to those who experience it? Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”32 Solitude can inspire a sense of freedom and foster creativity. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) has said, “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”33 There is a delicate balance between solitude and loneliness, and a still finer one between loneliness and isolation. As French surgeon Philibert Joseph Roux (17801854) is famously quoted as saying, “solitude vivifies; isolation kills.”34 The experience of solitude can reinforce a sense of harmony within the self and between self and society. Recall that in Plato’s allegory of the cave, the philosopher’s journey to enlightenment occurs within the self. This notion figures in our later concept of education, whose etymology is from the Latin, “educere” (from “ex”/“out” and “ducere”/“to lead”), to “lead/bring out”. In Plato’s view, enlightenment, which is gained by educative means, is then, likewise, to be “brought out” in others. Indeed, for Plato, wisdom and virtue are ideals of philosophic contemplation. They are also the basis for self-enlightenment and the cultivation of enlightenment in others so that they, too, might come closer to being wise and virtuous members of society. If the soul is where the potential for learning resides, then it is also the originating source of philosophic

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contemplation. Similarly, René Descartes (1596-1650), in a letter (1642) to philosopher and theologian Guillaume Gibieuf (1583-1650), writes, “I am certain that I can have no knowledge of what is outside me except by means of the ideas I have within me.”35

Conclusion The wonder inspired by nature can strike to the very core of one’s being. Photographers and photo gazers are among those who participate in nature’s appreciation and contribute to the ongoing development of all manner of nature-inspired stories. Informed by imagination, philosophical thinking and an essentially limitless stock of nature’s richness of expression, such stories are celebrations of the intersection between human creativity and the natural world. They are also celebrations of the human spirit and a major component of humanity’s story, a story that has been traced and retraced since prehistoric times, and one that is ever becoming.

Notes 1 Plato, Rep., trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI (Princeton University Press, 1961), VIII:547b, p.776. Henceforth, all quotes from the Platonic Dialogues are from this cited source. 2 Ibid. 3 Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy: An Exposition with Regard to the Natural History of Animals, trans. Hugh Elliot (University of Chicago Press, 1984), 19. 4 For an interesting and informative book on aesthetic science, see Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain: How we Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art (Oxford University Press) 2014. 5 Sue Thomas, “Gazing at Virtual Nature is Good for Your Psychological WellBeing”, Slate.com, Dec. 17, 2013. 6 Plato, Phaed., trans. R. Hackforth, 230a, p.478. 7 Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, Harvard University Press, 1984. See also Sue Thomas, Ibid., slate.com, Dec. 17, 2013. 8 Ibid. 9 See Stephen R. Kellert, Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. See also Sue Thomas,

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Ibid., slate.com, Dec. 17, 2013. 10 For an informative overview of this subject, see “Mathematics and music: the architecture of nature,” by F. Morandi, E.B.P. Tiezzi & R.M. Pulselli [Morandi and Pulselli, Department of Chemistry, University of Siena, Italy; Tiezzi, Department of Mathematical Sciences “Roberto Magari”, University of Siena, Italy; in WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 138, ©2010 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line), doi: 10.2495/DN100011 11 Kepler’s Third Law of planetary motion represents a comparison of the motion of objects in orbits of different sizes. It is based upon a mathematical formula: the square of a planet’s orbital period is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. 12 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1(A), 981a1. 13 Plato, Gorgias, 454a. 14 Ibid. 15 Plato, Laws, trans. A.E. Taylor, X:889b, p.1444. 16 De musica is categorized among Boethius’ mathematical writings. It is believed to be based upon Ptolemy’s Harmonica, and a lost work by Nicomachus of Gerasa. 17 Plato, Epin, trans. A.E. Taylor, 975b, p. 1518. 18 Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1964), 148. 19 Koestler, Ibid. 20 Latin vacationem; nominative vacatio, meaning “leisure, freedom, exemption”. 21 See Oscar Wilde, Essays, Hesketh Pearson, ed., 1st edn. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1950. 22 See Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, Michael Bracewell, contributor, ekphrasis series. David Zwirner Books, 2019. Originally published in Wilde’s book, Intentions, 1891. 23 Plato, Laws, VI:769b, p. 1346. 24 Plato, Tim., trans. Benjamin Jowett, 90d, p. 1209. 25 Plato, Rep. II:376e. 26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I (A), trans. W.D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vols. 1 and 2, revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Bollingen Series LXXI, Vol. Two (Princeton University Press, 1984), Vol. 2, Book I, 980a25, p.1552. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 G.W. F Hegel, “Preface,” Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Allen W. Wood, ed., trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 23. Hegel’s work first published 1821. 30 Rep.; Parm.

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See Plotinus, 7 Vols., Eng. trans. by A.H. Armstrong, with Greek text (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1968-88), V1 & V9. For an excellent overview of the three fundamental principles of Plotinus’ metaphysics, see Gerson, Lloyd, “Plotinus”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zaita (ed.), URL = . 32 Albert Einstein. BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc, 2016. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins132607.html, accessed November 14, 2016. 33 Arthur Schopenhauer. BainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc, 2016. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/arthurscho377751.html, accessed November 14, 2016. 34 Joseph Roux. BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc, 2016. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/josephroux101753.html, accessed November 14, 2016. 35 See Smith, Kurt, “Descartes’ Theory of Ideas” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, (ed.), URL=.