"art for art's sake"

I googled Walter Pater, but did not google his name with the word epiphanies, (which was my original plan) I simply forgot to type it. However, im glad I didnt add the word for I was guided to something that I found more interesting. It led me to this quote:

“Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality of your moments as they pass, and simply for these moments sake”.

If I saw this quote a year ago, it would have meant diddly squat to me. However, it's not a year ago, its 2010. And part of this class is to draw parallels between the different classes, books and "stuff" we have learned over our careers as English scholars. The three authors/pieces of literature I feel stronly connect to this idea include: James Joyce's idea of furniture (which we talked about the second week of school), John Keats "Ode to a Grecian Urn", and Nabokov's "Transparent Things" (which I find myself going back to quite a bit, sorry for the redundancy).

Like we have discussed in "The Four Quartets", time is constantly moving. (obviously)  Past, Present and Future are three tenses that exist merely seconds apart from one another.  However, when a person sees an objects beauty, just as a piece of art and nothing else, then that person is making the absolute most, "highest quality"of that moment. As Joyce would say, "allowing that object to epiphanize." The piece of art is complete in itself, and does not need further understanding or commentary about its existance. I chose Keats, Nabokov and Joyce's writings because I feel they are all different and are able to make interesting correlations to the idea of "art for art's sake."

John Keats: 
I am including the last part of "Ode to a Grecian Urn"

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede   
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,   
With forest branches and the trodden weed;   
  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought   
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!      45
  When old age shall this generation waste,   
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe   
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,   
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all   
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Art is all about the moment and seeing something for what it really is, as Walter Pater might suggest.  Keats poem says that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all", so if someone can look at a piece of art in the moment, not think about the fact that it is an urn, which usually corelates with death, then a person might only see the forever beautiful women dancing on the urn, allowing a person to see it as something beautiful, nothing more, making the most out of the moment by seeing the truth. But is this beauty the truth? Or is it more honest to think about death and the past? Nabokov would think this diving into the history of an object or piece of art is only done by amateurs...

Vladimir Nabokov
"Transparent Things"
Edgar Allen Poe said, "This poem which is a poem and nothing more."  Nabokov would want people to have this same attiute towards objects, or maybe even art. If art's purpose is only for art's sake, then the only reason art is created is for aesthetic values, just like a pencil is only created for one reason, and nothing more. If a person can just be in the moment, and look at something for something's sake, then one does not sink into the abyss that surrounds everything in our world. However, Joyce thought that one should look at an object deeper, and by doing so, that object is able to acheive its epiphany.

James Joyce
Furniture. I blogged about this earlier in the semester. I saw the correlation between Pater because "art for art's sake" could be as simple as seeing something for its whatness. And the whatness of a painting is its aesthetic value, and the whatness of a poem is that its simply a poem, and the whatness of any form is art is usually just this. As soon as something sees something for its complete whatness, then they are able to appreciate something as it is exactly in the moment.

In the end, I think that art for art's sake has a lot to do with epiphanies. When a person can be completely in the moment, without their mind drifting into the past or present, then they are able to see something as it really is. Whether its art, the most amazing mountain, or an idea that seems to make sense, they see the "thing" as it is sapposed to be.

The Most Important Paper of my College Career.

The final paper. The conclusion. The single best piece of writing one will accomplish in their college career. And I finally have an idea.

I know this sounds vague, but I am writing about boxes. Literal boxes, figurative boxes, boxes we create for ourselves, and boxes others create for us, boxes we try to avoid, and boxes that are unavoidable. Boxes. Our lives are surrounded with different kind of boxes. The small or large boxes we live in, the boxes with wheels we take to work or school, the boxes we have to check off in order to succeed, the smaller boxes we wish to expand into larger boxes, etc... Even if we try to avoid these many boxes, they are what always surround us and play a strong roll in society. MSU is a large box, filled with many smaller boxes, that create boxes one must check off to leave the box of MSU and enter a completely different box, smaller or larger, than what we live in now.  Ok. Yes, I realize that this might not make complete sense right now, but after you read my paper, it will.

I havent quite decided what pieces of literature I will incorporate into my paper, but I think one of them might be The Four Quartets, just to keep on track with our class reading, as well include something that intruigued me earlier in my college career.

I understand that this paper should tie in the epiphany idea as well, which I have thought about deeply and will include. It will have to do with the idea that one is not able to epiphanize until they remove themselves from the many boxes and can view the world from the outside rather than from the inside. Kind of like a bird.

In the end, are our lives not complete until we are able to completely fill the boxes, or is it the other way around? Is our life only complete once we are able to empty the inventory of the boxes, and relieve ourselves from the past that fills them, or from the stress of filling the boxes in the future?

I guess I came up with the idea of this paper from reading blogs and class discussions in both Capstone and Emergent Lit.  In the end, I decided our lives are guided by these many different boxes, and only we, ourselves, can decide if we want to fill them or empty them in order to fulfill our own lives.

To hear a song that may represent my idea of boxes, please go to this link: It is the intro to the TV show "Weeds" :
The boxes all look the same. Be different.