Why has Bodhi-Dharma left for the East?

As for the movie, I’m still trying to get my hands on the Tree of Life. I’ll have to check out that 9 minute trailer, when I have a few more minutes to spare.

Your definition of success is that it does what the creator intended.

Another definition of artistic success would be that the work resonates far beyond what the creator ever imagined. As art, and not purely a communication science, its success would not be bound by the creator’s vision.

Just another perspective.

Actually I was not intending to define artistic success. I was complaining about sloppy usage of the word “success” in any context, not merely artistic.

I’ve now looked up the OED and see that I was wrong in trying to force this word to go in the direction I desired. The dictionary reminds me that the original meaning of the word is close to “what follows), or “outcome” as in the line of succession in a monarchy. All modern meanings of success derive from what used to be called “good success” (as opposed to “bad success” or “ill success”).

So taking your instance of the work’s ultimate resonance being out of control of the artist, which is, I should imagine, universally true, someone (a critic, I suppose) might judge what kind of success it is: a good, ill or indifferent one.

I hope you will speak of the success of The Tree of Life and say whether it be good or ill.

The back of my mind, you see, is a real jerk.

Alan Watts

I like what you say about popularity not being synonymous with success. And the John Muir quote is startling.

Everyone should read Essay on Criticism because it is short enough to be easily digestible even if you don’t like it.

I don’t know if it would resonate with you, but it certainly does with me: not the whole thing, but one thing specifically, actually two.

One:

To paraphrase Pope liberally: the main thing is a point one could merely state, without all the pomp. All works of art, though technically flawed, are not necessarily artistically imperfect. No brush stroke is exact; no phrase is perfectly turned. Critics who seek out and not the flaws seem to fail to realize that all works of art are greater than the sums of their parts, else they are not art. Therefore, it is illogical to seek out or point out specific technical flaws, as if they were relevant at all. The whole thing, taken as an artistic entity, should be the point of the artist and must be the point of art, as art is defined as a whole thing, not a collection of pieces.

The artist may or may not take special care with a specific brush stroke, a specific word or a specific crevice in a graven image, depending on his medium, but those kinds of details should remain in the domain of the artist, to be planned or to be incidental, and the critic need not know the internal method the artist used. Look at the art only in context of the whole work, not its flaws or its supposed intentions, and you will see the art for what is really is, which is wholly subjective to the viewer, and completely hidden from the critic.

Again, this is a liberal paraphrasing. It is the way in which the essay speaks to me.

Two:

The very famous passage, which speaks to more than just literary criticism:

A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take nor see the lengths behind

But more advanced behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales and seem to tread the sky,

The eternal snows appear already passed
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last.
But those attained we tremble to survey
The growing labors of the lengthened way

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills and Alps on Alps arise!

You are probably familiar with it already, but it spoke of the arrogance of humans to claim that they are the creators of this wonder or that one and that they are victims of an unjust deity when things go wrong. A cancer patient suddenly turns his back on God because a just God would not have allowed him to get cancer. Again, I am paraphrasing and relating what I took from it.

If a human does not understand God, then he cannot judge Him. The idea is ludicrous. Yet, humans claim not to understand Him and yet they do judge Him. They make assertions about what is right and wrong and how things should be based on their personal opinions, reasoning, and assumptions, while at once claiming allegiance to the moral will of Another, even while they freely admit a total lack of comprehension about how God works. Pope considered the “problem of evil,” not to be a problem, but to be a puzzle easily solved: “human arrogance.”

I read this essay as a child, and a translation of Voltaire’s rebuttal (I think it was a translation), “The Lisbon Diaster”, or something like that; my memory fails me. I have not read Voltaire in over 20 years, but I have reread Pope. Anyway, if one were to read Essay on Man for the first time, then he may also want to read Voltaire.

A few passage from Essay on man that stayed with me from my childhood. The first, I am able to recite from memory, even today. It is in my philosophical toolbox, as Pope presented it. The second one, I remember, but must look up. It is also in my toolbox, but it sometimes gets covered with wrenches and levels and awls.

Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.

Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

And This:

Ask for what end the heav’nly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, “Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow’r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev’ry flow’r;

Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.”

I remember seeing this film for sale at a time when I was being especially averse to spending money (it wasn’t cheap). Now that I’ve read your recommendation I plan to see if I can find a copy at the somewhat eclectic video rental place we visit regularly. I’m reluctant to describe myself as a Buddhist but I have been practicing for a number of years using for instruction a number of books collected over a long period. Without a real teacher it’s difficult to plumb the depths or scale the heights.

I do own a documentary film called ‘Unmistaken Child’ that I’d suggest you might also like.

“You too can have weather – here’s how, in three easy steps!”

Is not this a function of art – to expose the otherwise unacknowledged “back of my mind”, and make something of it? You are almost tempting me into doing a blog-post treatment of If….

Your Point One: it seems to me that Pope was inspired by some contemporaneous criticism fashionable in his time. Taken out of context and as summarised by you they could lead towards a form of idolatry, as in your earlier remark about a resonance beyond what the creator ever imagined. I don’t know that an artistic creator has to imagine any resonance. I think the artist simply does his or her best. As for criticism, I see no relevance today in criticising criticism; or rather it has no resonance for me. I may say something about a film, perhaps pointing to what I don’t like about The Tree of Life, or what I do like about Bodhidharma; but it won’t be “criticism” in the literary-academic sense: merely the notes of a wayfarer sharing thoughts which strike him vividly. Those who earn a living from criticism, whether academics, hack reviewers or some bastardised hybrid, must of course take their trade a good deal more seriously.

Your Point Two: yes, I could imagine getting excited about this passage, for example if I were at school aged 16 and asked to write an essay on the poem. It would be a wonderful discovery. But at that age, I was discovering something in Wordsworth, and writing several pages in my exercise book on lines such as:

A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

We glanced at Pope & Dryden, and saw how drily they glittered. I couldn’t help it. I found myself pre-tuned to the Romantics, and never bothered to challenge myself on that; except that in French poetry I learned to admire the Parnassian school as led and typified by Théophile Gautier. And now I find it too much effort to admire Pope personally. All the same, when you point him out, I do see what you are talking about, & admire him in passing.

I don’t think Pope was against criticism. I think he was against nitpicking criticism, as supported by his A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing commentary, which has been adapted for other philosophical arguments after the fact. When it stands alone, outside its context, it makes a slightly different, but more meaningful statement

As for saying what you like about a film, I don’t think that is the form of criticism in question. The difference would be if you said what you don’t like about a great work of literary fiction is that one of the constumes seemed anachronistic. I am not aware of Pope being anti-criticism in the form of anti-art appreciation. In fact, I think the opposite was true. I think he was anti nitpicking.

Now that you speak of it, I can see how Pope would not appeal to you, though. His most famous works were mostly argumentative and somewhat in rebuttal to the works of other philosophies, as opposed to venturing into less charted territory, or saying much without taking a firm stance.

I’ve written my own recent movie review on my new blogging effort (Yes, I’ve started a new blog, as the old ones seemed to have reached a kind of dead end.) Check it out if you like:

http://sunnystrangers.blogspot.com/2012/03/woman-in-black-popcorn-review.html

For reference, the tweak to achieve this fix was found here: http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/01/how-to-remove-blogger-threaded-comments.html”

I would love to reply to this myself, but the reply link appears to be missing.

On an unrelated topic which somehow popped into my head, I’ve been trying to block the entrance to a rat’s nest in the backyard. I put down some wire netting covered with a heavy upturned plant pot. Came to check. A huge tail was visible, quivering, apparently belonging to a stuck rat. I lifted the plant pot and the tail’s owner fled. As a brother or at least a cousin to all living things, I’m trying to encourage this family to seek pastures new, without inflicting any cruel or unusual punishments upon them.

No resemblance to living commenters on this blog is implied by my tail I mean tale.