Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

It is hard to believe someone when they claim to be moral. Wasn't Lovecraft a racist?

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Lovecraft's reasoning here is faulty. As Max Weber (and others before him) has demonstrated, there is no way to make normative conclusions from arguments that are merely descriptive. You cannot conclude how things should be merely from a description of how they are. There has to be a normative ingredient from the outset in order to make a normative conclusion.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Didn't Pope Innocent VIII transfuse blood from three boys, resulting in their deaths, in an attempt to keep himself alive? Lovecraft was not infallible. Does that make him entirely lacking of morality?

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

In other words, you are proposing that the 'sacred' and 'holy' (not the words alone, but the realities that they would signify) could be purely subjective. Isn't that a very strange idea of the 'sacred' and 'holy'? Aren't they supposed to be above and beyond the subjectivity of any odd individual?

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

I know full well that my own views differ from those of many people on these message boards, and also that they differ from the the assumptions about those views that are thrown at me on the occasions that I express them. That's not really the issue. Why? Because, even if there is a debate to be had, I'm not interested in having it here.

The issue is simply this: in a world where literacy rates are falling and libraries are being closed down, someone is starting a new literary journal. Have we read it yet? No. Do we know what it will be like? Not until we read it.

My impression is that the journal will be quite different in ethos to how a literary journal would be if I had set it up. Do I therefore wish to censure? No. This is what literature is all about - different points of view, exploring ideas, symbolic gestures, crashing the plane and walking away, etc.

First of all, it seems like something to celebrate that new literary journals are still appearing. Secondly, why don't we read them first before criticising?

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

I agree with Quentin here. Attacking a publication no one here has yet seen, simply because, from the guidelines, the aesthetic seems to be different from your own, is a sort of ugly thing. The energy would be better used attacking some large publisher of total trash.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Aren't we allowed to discuss the manifesto put up by this new Literary Journal? In a civilized fashion?

I'm genuinely intrigued about your ideas of the 'sacred' and 'holy'. But suspicious too, admittedly. And so what?

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

Good evening Joel,

I have just returned from a weekend away and have thus only just seen your message. More to the point something in that previous message could been seen as a covert attack against you which it is not. A more forthcoming message will follow: the former is just the most important statement.

I have in fact suggested Arthur Rimbaud and his concept of 'The Alchemy of the Word' to several individuals who expressed interested in submitting material to the anthology. The only thing I shall with regards Rimbaud is that I am by preference a prose formalist and one of Rimbaud's lasting influences as to inspire far losser, more informal trends in verse. Now while I like some of the former's poetry - for instance 'The Drunken Boat' is one of the finest poems in the French language - I do not much care for the influence he had on literature. I am, if anything, an Anti-Modernist at least in regards to Anglophone literature.

I do enjoy Lorca, though to be truthful find Rilke overrated. Ironically the latter would be far more Symbolist and thus fitting, than Lorca whose poetry drew much from Romantic and folkloric sources.

At this point I must state that I rather resent your implication that I should 'hate' Schulz and his view point merely because I may not agree with all parts of it. I am sure there are some aspects of Trotsky's ideology which you would abhorrent yet this by now means disqualifies you from admiring the man or much of his philosophy.

I enjoy Schulz's fiction just as I enjoy Huysmans fiction; it doesn't mean I necessarily endorse the exact same views as either of them. In fact I may select aspects of others work and wider philosophy which I agree with even if I were not to concure with the whole.

The authors mentioned on that list had widely different political and personal philosophies. For instance George Bacovia, who apart from being a Schopeanhaur derived pessimist, was a staunch Communist sympathiser in the years proceeding the occupation of Romania (he did write some unpleasantly anti Semitic poetry though so I haven't mention him in any great depth). Likewise Gabriele d'Annunzio was a Nietzschian par excellence and I don't think I need remind the world of his political leanings (though to do him his due he was staunchly anti-Nazi and anti Hitler)

Well many pieces of his would: Autumnal, Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel et cetra. To answer Sun Dog's post at the same time the more Gnosticaly themed pieces, Nethescurial and The Sect of the Idiot for instance, would have also been much welcomed. I do not hold to Mr Ligotti's philosophy but I would still reckon him of the finest American writers of strange fiction (for one thing he can write prose well, which in itself is a dying skill).

To flip this round: I know many of you enjoy and think highly of the works of Arthur Machen? Now I'm sure doing so doesn't mean you are Anglo-Catholic. EDIT: Better yet I know many of you enjoy David Tibet's music, but will bet the first copy of whatever I publish that none of you are esoteric Buddhist Coptic Christians.

Brendan Connell has been err... critical, or at least irreverent, towards Christianity in his some of his fiction, yet he is not only in my opinion one of the finest writers working at present, but also one of my favourites. And I posted about this ages before I came into contact with him personally.

This actually ties into something I was going to mention in our conversation re Lorrain but since it's applicable I will post it here.

If one sincerely believes a false idea like Racial superiority or Jewish banking conspiracies or any of those other historic bug bears it still doesn't absolve one from dealing with the perceived problem in a moral way. So Lovecraft's fault was not that he worked under the false impression that other races were inferior, but that he hated and viewed them with malice, or at least disgust, because of it.

Of course none of this relates to the worth of the author's work.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

You may be right. You're probably more versed in philosophy than I am. But I think the quote still indicates he had moral feelings, even if his reasoning was off, and I doubt anyone who has read many of his letters and essays would claim he was not irreligious.

Re: Leaves for Art -Regenerating the Literature of Symbolism
 

It seems to me that the sacred can inhere only in the exoteric. Interiority is the province of the holy. Jesus and Paul understood this in their respective ways from the very begiinning. Thus , while Innocent Vlll's office is sacred, there is nothing sacred or holy about the man, who was recognized as a banal monster by many of his contemporaries