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#1 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: July 2005
Posts: 517
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![]() This post may initially seem to be a shade off-topic, but since this forum discusses the clash of beauty and modernity in general, it actually fits the theme.
- - - - The City Journal is a notable publication focussing on cultural and social isues. Its best contributor is probably Dr. Theodore Dalrymple. In his most recent article, Dalrymple makes a fascinating observation about an English locale that he recently visited: Quote:
I find this anecdote about the beautiful music of Bach being able to repel punks and street scum quite encouraging. I can just picture the spiky-haired louts, with their grotesque piercings and disgusting tattoos, running scared of Bach's lovely tones. It speaks of the instrinsic power of Beauty, and how it functions as an antidote to the ugliness and degeneracy of the modern world. Dalrymple's holy-water comparison is highly apt. As he further writes: Quote:
Dalrymple's anecdote presents a remarkable case of the noblity of Old World culture challenging the depravity of the modern world. It is very much analogous to how plus-size models, as an embodiment of Classical beauty, clash with androgynous straight-size models, who embody modern decay. Here's the article URL: http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0129td.html Last edited by HSG : 9th December 2009 at 20:03. Reason: Link updated |
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#2 |
Junior Member
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![]() That's awesome -- and hilarious! What other "weapons" can we use?
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#3 |
Junior Member
Join Date: February 2009
Posts: 23
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![]() Lovely! And so apt. But I must say that Count Dracula was a classic monster, and unlike street scum, his decadence had certain poetry.
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#4 |
Administrator
Join Date: July 2005
Posts: 1,784
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![]() Dalrymple's anecdote is intriguing. Its theme is very Lovecraftian: i.e., that there is a power in the Old Things, a power that degenerate modern man may not understand but apprehends nevertheless, and shakes him to his core. The other vignette that Dalrymple relates in his article is similarly compelling: I was sitting in a café where other customers were chatting, playing cards, or having a drink. The radio was on, tuned to a station that relayed idle chatter and banal popular music (you are lucky these days if popular music is banal only). But suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it played the first movement of Mozart’s clarinet quintet, transforming the café into what Leys called “the antechamber of paradise.” The customers stopped what they were doing, as if startled. Then one of them stood up, went over to the radio, and tuned it to another station, restoring the idle chatter and banal music. There was general relief, as if everyone felt that the beauty and refinement of Mozart were a reproach to their lives to which they could respond only by suppressing Mozart. The measure of a culture consists, in large part, of how it reacts to beauty. It is not Mozart or Bach who are judged by the tastes of either these boorish café-goers, or the street scum. Bach and Mozart are stable reference points of greatness. Rather, it is these listeners, and the culture in which they live, that are judged by their reactions. Second, the great chorale "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring": Small wonder that the "punks and street scum" run scared of this music, shamed as they are by its lyrical splendour and sacred wonder. |
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