Posted January 24, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Art, Culture / 0 Comments
I mentioned avant-garde in the previous entry so I thought it was only fitting to look at the originals. The Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood has been considered the first avant-garde movement in art. They throw away the rule book of art to create something different and exciting. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name Pre-Raphaelites.
The brotherhood rejected the rule and formula of art that were been taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Royal Academy of Art. They considered the work ‘sloppy’ and formulaic, they believed that Sir Sloshua (Sir Joshua) was stopping them explore other styles, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.
The brotherhood stop up against the norm and followed their own doctrine:
- To have genuine ideas to express;
- To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
- To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote;
- And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.
Influenced by Romanticism, they thought that freedom and responsibility were inseparable so they followed the principles of realism. The Brotherhood was met with lots of controversy in there struggle against the Royal Academy of art, but ultimately they influenced and changed art history as well. When the brotherhood disbanded the artists who had worked in the style still followed these techniques (initially anyway) but they no longer signed their works with “PRB”
Posted January 24, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 2 Comments
Because this book is known as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language, I thought I would explore the book a little more. No, I have not and probably never will read Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (Ok, I lie, I would probably try to read it, if my passion for modern culture continues) but I like to learn more of these types of books.
The thing I found interesting about what I’ve learnt is this book is that the entire thing is written in an idiosyncratic language, consisting of multilingual puns and portmanteau words. This to me would mean that there would never be a correct interpretation of this book; it’s just a twisted world full of no answers.
The book is a non linear story which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Which is interesting because back in the early 1900 Freud wrote a book called “The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales”. In this he made mention of dreams been a coded message waiting to be cracked. So it seems Finnegans Wake was just James Joyce deciding to follow this idea and blend it with his obvious love of puns to create a completely unorthodox book.
For a book that took seventeen years to write, it’s hard to think what the point of it is. Is this just a social experiment that Joyce was doing? Maybe he was just setting out to defy all conventions of plot and character construction. What ever the reason was it remains on of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen so far.
Just a great example of avant-garde in modern literature that doesn’t get read. I think the only people that do read it are the people fascinated with this kind of topic and the people that read it to sound intellectual.
I would love to talk to someone who’s actually read this book.
EDIT: I read somewhere that the idea of all the puns is so essentially the book never ends.
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Posted January 23, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 0 Comments
I found this book recently called “Foucault’s Pendulum” (still haven’t read it) but I’m in love with the concept. Reminds me of the John Cage Quote “Finnegans Wake is one of the books I’ve which always loved, but never read” (sorry for the tangent, just adding that quote to remind me to write about both John Cage and Finnegans Wake).
Written by Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco the novel is basically about three friends that decide they can make a better conspiracy theory then what’s out there and they set out to create the conspiracy known as ‘The Plan’. As the story progresses these three begin to forget it’s a game and become more and more obsessed with the ideas and theories and start making connections to other theories out there; like lost artefacts and the Templers. Even a very real secret society begins to believe one of the three possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Eventually ‘The Plan’ involves connections between a whole range of different societies like;
- The Knights Templar
- The Rosicrucians
- The Gnostics
- The Freemasons
- The Bavarian Illuminati
- The Elders of Zion
- The Assassins of Alamut
- The Cabalists
- The Bogomils
- The Cathars
- The Jesuits
The concept is brilliant and makes me ponder a few ideas, like ‘Will people believe anything that is printed?’ and ‘Do you start believing your own lies if you say them enough?’
I have a huge pile of books to read but I’m excited about reading this book. It has been described as “the thinking person’s Da Vinci Code” with makes me even more excited, I know the Da Vinci Code was a good read but it wasn’t thought provoking.
Posted January 22, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Poetry / 0 Comments
Lord Byron is probably best known as a poet for the romantic period. widely read and influential, considered one of the greatest English poets of all time.
So I wanted to look more into the personal side of his life. Which is sometimes described as; ‘upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separations.’ I’m not an expert but this is what I’ve managed to piece together and thought it was very interesting, I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me.
As a teenage he feel for a distant cousin Mary Chaworth, which his mother thought, “He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth.”
Byron expressed a sense of melancholy;
“Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear
To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad, the love denied at home.”
Later in life he had an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb which involved a lot of obsession from either side. Once the affair ended Lady Caroline became emotionally disturbed and lost a lot of weight, Byron described this as if he was been “haunted by a skeleton”. Lady Caroline Lamb described Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”
Through the rest of his life he still seemed to continue with marriages and affairs, and numerous amount of debt, due to his reckless disregard for money. Later in life he became involved in The Carbonari, which were a secret revolutionary societies whose goals were patriotic and liberal. They played an important role in the Risorgimento and the early years of Italian nationalism. He then went on to fight in the Greek War of Independence, against the Ottoman Empire, which is where he developed sepsis causing him to develop a violent fever and died.
Interestingly enough Byron often described his affairs as ‘violent and passionate’.
Posted January 22, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 0 Comments
Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins wrote the song Disarm about a fantasy of cutting his parents limbs off. Because he hated them, he hated the fact they brought him into this world which is full of hate and all he wants, is to be loved.
“It’s about chopping off somebody’s arms.. The reason I wrote Disarm was because, I didn’t have the guts to kill my parents, so I thought I’d get back at them through song. And rather then have an angry, angry, angry violent song I’d thought I’d write something beautiful and make them realize what tender feelings I have in my heart, and make them feel really bad for treating me like shit. Disarm’s hard to talk about because people will say to me ‘I listen to that song and I can’t figure out what it’s about.’ It’s like about things that are beyond words. I think you can conjure up images and put together phrases, but it’s a feeling beyond words and for me it has a lot to do with like a sense of loss. Being an adult and looking back and romanticizing a childhood that never happened or went by so quickly in a naive state that you miss it.” — Billy Corgan on Disarm
Does this sound familiar?
Well it defiantly does to me, my all time favourite book is “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley which is an amazing story written in two view points. Dr. Victor Frankenstein created a monster and being scared of his creation abandoned it. Monster Frankenstein was a lost soul, with nothing the desire to be loved, yet his creator abandoned him and society feared and wanted to destroy him.
At the very end of the book when asked to justify his actions Monster Frankenstein said something like; “I do this because I feel too much, I was brought into this world with the desire to love and denied it at every turn”
Both Billy Corgan and Monster Frankenstein both wanted to be love but life and society seemed to give them violent thoughts. Billy Corgan expressed his dark thoughts via writing a song but Monster Frankenstein didn’t know how to handle these thoughts.
Support Knowledge Lost and my reading habits, If you wish to get a copy of Frankensteinor the Smashing Pumpkins album which featured Disarm; Siamese Dream do so here.
Posted January 7, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Science Fiction / 0 Comments
Title: Brave New World (Goodreads)
Author: Aldous Huxley
Published: Vintage, 1932
Pages: 288
Genres: Classic, Science Fiction
My Copy: Personal Copy
Buy: Amazon (or visit your local Indie bookstore)
Aldous Huxley got it right when he wrote Brave New World, he wrote about a society were everyone lived for themselves, only considered about the pleasure they would receive out of life. This was written as a Utopian society but it does seem to reflect our society as well. The novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Posted December 31, 2009 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 0 Comments
I set myself the goal to read 12 books in the year, seemed like a perfect place to start. Especially for someone that is trying to convert into an avid reader. I achieved my goal, and I found some beautiful treasures. Also for those people that don’t count graphic novels, novellas or short stories in the 12, I did read 12 novels as well as a graphic novel, novella & short story.
You must be away that I never really was a reader in my childhood so this is probably as many books as I’ve read in my life previously. Biggest highlight of the year was Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, it is now my security blanket (so to speak); I carry it with me where ever I go, in one form or another. I also know own a beautiful leather-bound copy of the book as well as a paperback (for reading) copy of the book. It is now my measuring stick to every other book I read. In Non Fiction I can’t go past Hey! Nietzsche! Leave them kids alone!: The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll, And The End Of Civilisation As We Know It, this has started a new found passion in all things Culture and Romantic which lead to this blog.
As for my life time reading goals by completing all the books on the 1001 books to read before you die & Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, I have now read 8 of the 1001 and 2 of the 100. Some extremely interesting books on these lists like; Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death & Nineteen Eighty-Four. Out of all the books on the list of 1001 books to read before you die I was only disappointed in one (American Psycho) but that was possibly due to the fact that the movie is very similar and the book offered nothing new to the story. If I read the book before seeing the movie I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Watchmen took a lot of effort to really get into, it was a great story I just felt I struggled at times. Another book that I struggled to get through was Dracula, the story was good but it seemed to drag on and on at times, it could have cut a few sections and still worked.
Posted December 28, 2009 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Writing / 0 Comments
Frankenstein is my all time favourite book and it is the subject of my first of hopefully many ‘Learnt from Literature’ topics. This book is a shining example of multiple view points. It did this flawlessly and managed to draw the reader in on both sides of the story. At the beginning the villain seems clear ‘Monster Frankenstein’ is the problem, but then you read it from the monsters view point you understand that maybe he isn’t a villain but a victim.
When I do write I think back on this story and wonder if I could replicate a similar scenario, I want to blur the lines and challenge the reader. I believe that’s the makings of a good writer.
Posted December 22, 2009 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 2 Comments
Recently I’ve discovered the concept of modern day romantics with the help of a very interesting person, Craig Schuftan. Now he wrote a book about the topic called “Hey, Nietzsche! Leave them kids alone. The Romantic movement, rock and roll, and the end of civilization as we know it.” He released a pretty good quiz on the topic.
My Results were; (which I must admit, think are pretty accurate and was very impressed with)
You are romantic to the core, but like to think you have moved beyond its limitations. You are disgusted by the shopkeeper values of modern society, and have replaced them with your own. You identify with strong romantic heroes like Napoleon, Lord Byron, Satan or Ziggy Stardust – those who push against the limits life has imposed on us, who symbolise our desire and be somehow more than human.
Posted December 22, 2009 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in My Poetry / 0 Comments
In life I am misunderstood,
I am a creature of confusion,
I do not understand the world I live in,
Was I put here by mistake?
Or is there a purpose of me?
In an attempt to understand a mindset I wrote that bit of poetry. Trying to understand I asked myself the following.
What is differing in the mind of a killer?
Are they not like everyone else?
Are they not someone that was pushed over the edge by society?
What makes one person turn out this way is it just a state of mind?
Are we all capable of this?
