Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Ain't This America What is distinctive about American art and letters

Numan, I agree with every single thing you said especially my emphasis.

I don't believe a word of the last sentence though!

You interpret my writing with a subtlety which I do not often find here.

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It is a remarkable work of art. However, my favorite work of non-monumental Egyptian art, even if it does come from the New Kingdom, is the bust of Nefertiti which is presently held by the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin.



As with all great works of sculpture, it looks very different depending on the angle at which it is viewed, and the type of lighting with which it is illuminated. Sometimes she looks young and innocently mischievous, but I am most impressed when she is seen as holding a noble pose, looking eternally across the ages, never flinching as she awaits her gods to speak to her. That sometimes moves me almost to tears.

P.S. What has the United States ever produced that even approaches the magnificence of this single work of art?

Well, perhaps those refined Europeans - especially the British official that declared it to be the filthiest book he'd ever read - were insufficently aware of the subtle, extended metaphor. A bit too nuanced for them, perhaps?

I believe that Nabokov also achieved some academic fame as the founder of Wellesly's Russian department, and as the curator of Harvard's lepidoptery collection. Too bad he couldn't achieve his potential in the "civilized" world.

And I'll wager a half-donut that he was not at all insulted by the money that Lolita made for him in the land of the barbarian hordes.

It's truly a work of art, isn't it?

And where is "civilized" Europe's and Asia's work that has approached the magnificence of the images of the earth and the moon from space? The blue and white jewel of Earth against the jet black of space, above the harsh, gray-bright and dead surface of the moon rolling past beneath Apollo?

The first Earthrise, from Apollo 8

Should this sublime image from nature, produced by the artistry a raw, young culture, be considered inferior to anything produced by older cultures?

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Sigh. The obtuseness of so many Americans is one of the many things that make living in the USA so very trying. Dealing with the almost paleolithic lack of sophistication of Americans is like trying to swim through a sea of molasses.

The well-known Canadian novelist Robertson Davies wrote that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child". It would be more true to say that both these themes are woven together seamlessly with consumate artistry; and even that view of the novel is but a shadow of the higher theme of the exploitation of innocent America by cunning Europe, and the corruption of weak Europe by amoral and exploitative America.

Moreover, Lolita is filled with wit and humor that is uniquely Nabokovian --- though since one would need to be civilized to appreciate it, it will pass over the heads of most Americans.

I know of no work of art that says so much about modern America in so short a space as Lolita, --- not even Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer, or Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One.

Curious that the best writing about the United States has been by foreigners; but Americans seem to have difficulty seeing even the surface of things --- being taken up with watching the self-congratulatory images flickering across the inner screen of what may be called their minds.

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And your point is?

How about this?

or this?

What does a sea of mole's arses have to do with art, numan?
Yours,
Issodhos

Are you now claiming that the United States created the Earth and the Moon?

That seems to pass beyond the customary hubris of even an American!

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