Who owns art?

The link provided is an article in the New York Times about the contentious issue of who owns pieces and artifacts displayed in museums, as many pieces were illegally excavated or pillaged from their nation of origin. Reminded me of our discussion about who if anyone owns a work of literature, is it the author, the reader, etc?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/arts/artsspecial/29treasures.html?pagewanted=all

Where are you from?

A question I considered in why someone would adopt either optimistic or pessimistic outlooks on life may have something to do with the concrete social situation a person find themselves in. For an indiviudal who has been divorced, suffered many losses within their family, and were economically destitute, we would not be surprised to find this person is not the most charitable in believing the world is not entirely ill conceived. Interstingly enough those who are in situations of extreme poverty often try and perhaps at times succeed in authentically believeing that things could get better and that at its core humanity is not cruel, aggressive, and violent. Perhaps they do so only in the hopes to one day escape the misfortunes they are plagued with, but again it seems that from what social situation you approach interpeting humanity may offer insight into why you draw specific conclusions about the world.

On two types of knowledge

It seems to me that as we have discussed so far, there appear to be two extereme forms of knowledge which we can come to know as part of the human experience. The first seems to be that with a better understanding of humanity and its behaviors, one could succumb to the pessimistic appraoch offered by Melville and Hawthorne and concede that human existence and human life is defined by suffering, death, pain, and a futile constant striving. The second type of knowledge a person can aquire taking Schopenhauer's appraoch is a type of mystical wisdom which once posessed, allows an indiviudal to transcend the suffering of their existence and know authentic truth. While it seems that sorrow may accompany the aquistion of knowledge, in the positive extreme knowledge is the only way to escape the horror to which Schopenauer considers to be the human life.

On pessimists

I was looking up some more information about Melville's pessimism and authors like him and I found a quote that I thought was relevant. It talks about why Nathaniel Hawthorne, another pessimist author, sought to create the characters and narratives they did: "In part these three writers (Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville) felt that American life lacked materials for great fiction. Hawthorne bemoaned the difficulty of writing in a country where there is 'no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong'. Psychology not society fascinated these writers. Each probed the depth of the human mind rather than the intricacies of social relationships.Their work displayed an underlying pessimism and about the human condition and the fundamental irrationality of human nature"

While I agree that the human experience would be incomplete without pondering the evils and ills of the world, with such an outlook on life specifically as an artist, life seems more like a curse than a blessing, and for me it would lose all meaning if I solely defined life as suffering, pain, and death.

On interpretations

 This came from an article I found when looking for symbolism in Moby Dick and I found it entertaining:

 Humor columnist Dave Barry once gave potential English majors some advice using Moby-Dick as an example: -Never say anything about a book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example, suppose you are studying Moby-Dick. Anybody with any common sense would say Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper you say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor...will think you are enormously creative.

 There must be at least some textual evidence. So we don’t advise you to argue that Moby Dick represents Ireland. Still, there’s a good reason that Dave Barry chose Moby-Dick when he wanted to give an example of a Big Important Symbol that has many possible interpretations – and which is obviously demanding to be interpreted, possibly in a ludicrous way.

On Perspective

One of the author's I am using for my paper is Elisabeth Camp, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania who has written about metaphor, fiction, and some other concepts we have discussed in class. The essay I am reading is call "Perspectives in Imaginative Engagement in Fiction" in which she looks into the paradox of fiction, emotional responses to literary works, and the role of the imagination. She believes that readers of literature adopt a certain perspective, something which structures the way they think and how they relate certain concepts. She believes it includes what a reader may already know about a gene, author, or work and what information we have about the real world. In my paper I argue that we have certain expectations when reading a text in which we desire using our imagination and hoping the authors work is vivid and descriptive as to encourage that  imaginative experience. I was interested to see what elements might belong to your perspective when reading a work or what this idea of the perspective is missing? Thoughts?

Thats not what I meant

An interesting comment that Brett made today in class was about whether or not a metaphor has to be intentional or whether accidental ones could be created. Brett believes for the sake of his paper that metaphor is intentional and is used to communicate something specific from author to reader. While I do agree with him that is is a communicative device, I am unsure whether they are always intentional. The two essays we have read on Melville thus far, to some degree interpret his works far beyond what he might have at all intended them to represent. This projection of certain themes or ideas onto a work may not be congruent with the author's intentions..but doesnt it make for a good read? Lets say Melville didnt anticipate existensialism, but the fact that his works point in that direction is still an intersting way to approach the text. It seems we keep mentioning interpretation as if various interpretations are wrong, while the text may have specific content and metaphoric elements, but to what harm does it cause fans of literature to have several different ways to analyze the work? While some things people will look for in the text are not there, viewers of art often find something pleasing about the work aside from its literal meaning or the intention of the creator.