Archive for May 2019
Rehearsal
A theme, a melody, is a definite statement in tones—and apparently music can never have enough of saying over again what has already been said, not once or twice, but dozens of times; hardly does a section, which consists largely of repetitions, come to an end before the whole story is happily retold over again.
How is it that a procedure which, in any other form of expression, would produce sheer nonsense proves, in the language of music, to be thoroughly sensible—to such an extent that rehearing what has already been heard is one of the chief sources—for many, the chief source—of the pleasure given by music?
Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol. HT: John Barach
Anti-natural
Gentlemen, organic processes delay the fall. . . . When you build a wall of a house, you do not delay the fall, but you dam it up. You prevent it. You put on the brakes. You dam it off. So, gentlemen, you stop the fall. That’s what all work does, because all work tries to build, energetically, resistance against what would otherwise happen by nature. Work is always an anti–natural. By nature, the thing would crumble. By your work, you stop the fall. . . .
If you are passionate, gentlemen, you defy all the gravity. A lover, and anybody who is passionate can swing—can overcome hurdles and obstacles. He can swing himself over fences, which no impassionate man can. Passion, therefore, gentlemen, overcomes gravity. It defies gravity, and it can soar with the wings of the dawn.
(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
Gravity
I don’t believe in passion just as a word, my dear man. Passion means to be given wings so that you can do deeds which otherwise you couldn’t do. The drab worker who works eight hours a day, when he is in love can suddenly work on the site four more hours to build a house for his sweetheart, or whatnot, I mean. Or he can suddenly get a better job, because he is winged. Love, you see, . . . goes uphill. . . . Wherever you are in love, gentlemen, the difficult becomes the easy. . . And that’s why the salmons go upstream, to spawn. That shows their vitality. When you are in love, gentlemen, you overcome gravity. That’s the test. This is the test of love, gentlemen, that you do overcome gravity. Otherwise you are not in love.
(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
Intrepid
It’s the same, gentlemen, the difference between courage and intrepidity. . . . You all have intrepidity, I take it. It’s the great American virtue. But that intrepidity is something that comes this side of fear. Now gentlemen, a courageous man is not a man who has intrepidity, who never trembles. But a courageous man is a man who doesn’t give a damn for his own cowardice. That is, if you don’t have the coward inside yourself, you can’t be courageous. You’re just foolhardy. That’s not courage. . . . Courageous is the man who is able to overcome his cowardice, and whom I shall respect. But I shall not respect the foolhardy, who doesn’t even know of the danger.
(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
I gotta have my orange juice. 