• Do you love artistic works such as painting, music, literature so on?

And Why?

Art for Art’s Sake

Art for art’s sake It was derived from Kant’s view that art has

its own reason for being. The phrase was first used by the French philosopher Victor Cousin in 1818. This doctrine, sometimes called aestheticism.

Art for art’s sake rejects the idea that the success of an art object can be measured by its accuracy as a representation or the effectiveness with which it tells a story or suggests a moral(practical function). Instead, it implies that an art object is best understood as an autonomous creation to be valued only for the success with which it organizes color and line into a formally satisfying and therefore beautiful whole. It was most popular during 1870-1880.

What does this author mean by “art for art’s sake”?

“Viewed with … and Rembrandt.”

In this understanding, insisting on art for art’s sake will make it seem less worrying that Shakespeare’s influence is not as great as before or that the fame of Giotto, Titian, and Rembrandt has declined.

Little Lord Fauntleroy Blue velvet suit witha lacy collar toga

dressing-gown

sterilize 1. make free from bacteria( 高温 )消毒，灭菌：He boiled his syringe and fired his knife to

sterilize them. 2. make infertile 使不孕，给…绝育： She's been sterilized after she had five

children. 他们有了第五个孩子之后，她做了绝育手术。 3. make unfruitful 使 (土地 )不毛，使贫瘠化

Deprived of essential things to survive in material world

Rule out 1. exclude not considering 排除We certainly wouldn‘t rule out the

possibility of another bidder coming forward.

2. deny 否认，不承认 He firmly ruled out that he had met with

Rosaline.

• “Jacobean England”• It is England under the

reign of King James I (belonging to or typical of the period between 1603 and 1625 in Britain), which overlaps Shakespeare’s life period. James I was born in Scotland and was also king of Scotland. Since Shakespeare and his company often performed for James I, the playwright probably wrote Macbeth, a play based on Scottish legends, to please the king.

Macbeth As one of King Duncan’s chief

generals and closest military advisers, Macbeth is led to perform wicked deeds by the prophecies of three witches and the machinations of his wife. When he is pronounced Thane of Cawdor( 考德爵士 )for his military victories – a prophecy come true before his ascension to the kingship – he is tempted into murder to fulfill the second prophecy. Once he is crowned king, his brutal plans are made all the easier as he begins killing indiscriminately to ensure his throne. He is not subtle, nor effective as he riles the entire Scottish nobility against his tyrannous ways and ultimately falls before the might of his own psychological pressure and the might of his opposition.

Act 1 Scene 3(The Heath, enter Macbeth and Banquo)Macbeth: So foul and fair a day I have not seen.(Enter three witches)Banquo: What are these? So withered and wild in their attire that look not like the inhabitants of the Earth.Macbeth: Speak, if you can. What are you?First Witch: All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.Second Witch: All Hail, Macbeth. Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.

Third Witch: All hail Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter.…Macbeth: Stay, you imperfect speakers! Tell me more. By Sinel’s (Macbeth’s father) death, I know I am Thane of Glamis. But how of Cawdor? Say from whence you owe this intelligence. Or why upon this heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?(Witches vanish) 

“Macbeth for Macbeth’s sake,” A parody of “art for art’s sake.” Forster uses such

parody to emphasize the notion that a product of art has a life of its own and has a value of its own (besides its educational, moral and informative value, etc.).

但此外《麦克白》有其自身的天地，它由莎士比亚创造，并凭借其自身的诗意而存在。在这方面是“为《麦克白》而《麦克白 ”》 ，我认为这就是“为艺术而艺术”这一口号的意思。一件艺术品——不管它是什么——是一个自足的存在，拥有其创造者赋予它的自身的生命。它有其内在的秩序。它还可能有外在的形式。这是我们识别它的方式。

La Grande Jatte

Order, I suggest, is something evolved from within, not something imposed from without.

I think order arises spontaneously / /autonomously from the inside, not caused by some factors / forces from the outside.

Extra-credit: Background research• What period of Persia is regarded by

Forster as an example of advantageous disorder?

• Antigone• The ceiling of Sistine• PhedrePost your research results to the forum

before 6:00 pm, May 30th will earn you one point.

A question to discuss: “Science shows no signs of doing this: she gave us

the internal combustion engine, and before we had digested and assimilated it with terrible pains into our social system, she harnessed the atom, and destroyed any new order that seemed to be evolving. “

The relation between scientific discovery and society

The ethics of scientific discovery Frankenstein

The army of unalterable law

Lucifer in Star night by George Meredith

Antigone (Oedipus’s daughter)• The Story is about how Antigone has

struggled against the tyrant King Creon. one of Antigone's brothers is killed in battle against Creon. Creon declares that, as punishment, his body must be left on the plain outside the city to rot and be eaten by animals instead of being buried. Antigone determines this to be unjust and immoral, and determines to bury her brother regardless of Creon's law. The story ends in disaster, with Antigone hanging herself after being walled up, and Creon's son Haimon, who loved Antigone, kills himself after finding her dead body. Queen Eurydice, wife of King Creon, also kills herself at the end of the story due to seeing such actions allowed by her husband.

•

Sistine

Les Phares (The Beacons) Charles Baudelaire

• These curses, blasphemies ( 渎神的言行 ), and lamentations, These ecstasies, tears, cries and soaring psalms — Through endless mazes, their reverberations Bring, to our mortal hearts, divinest balms.

• A thousand sentinels repeat the cry. A thousand trumpets echo. Beacon-tossed A thousand summits flare it through the sky, A call of hunters in the jungle lost.

• Because it(art) is really, Lord, best testimony • That we can give our dignity• That this burning sob which rolls of age in age • And comes to die at the edge of your eternity!

The first part of the poems talk about Leonado de Vince, Rembrandt, Michel-Ange, and other famous artists.

“It is … cannot be hidden.” 它（艺术）是一千个哨兵的呐喊，一千座迷宫的回声；它是无从遮蔽的灯塔：这是我们所能给你的我们的尊严的最好证明。

Estimable is mateyness, and the man who achieves it gives many a pleasant little drink to himself and to others.

It is admirable to be friendly, and such a friendly artist will bring pleasure both to himself and to others.

“so round and round he slouches, with his hat pulled over his eyes, and maybe with a louse in his beard, and – if he really wants one – a peacock’s feather in his hand.

What is Forster’s attitude to the notion that the artist tends to be an outsider in society?

Foster kind of agrees with this notion. He considers the artist as an independent individual devoted to his own career of creation. To be too much involved in the secular world may ruin his creation, while being an outsider could enables him to see more clearly and be more creative in seeking for the internal order in art.

“the outsider, the parasite, the rat” They are what the contemporaries call artists,

because they think that artists are of no significant use in the present society, no matter whether it is a society in war or in peace. But if the present society collapses some day, then the images of the artists will be clearer, that is people will tend to realize the distinction and importance of artists in a society.

“Myself, I … little longer.” Forster prefers to be a “swimming rat” rather

than a “sinking ship” because when a rat is in water, it can swim and struggle freely, while a sinking ship can do nothing to prevent itself from going down.

To be part of a “sinking ship” means to be one of the ignorant mass that is unaware of the dangers around. And to be “a swimming rat”, one can at least “look around longer” and gain a better understanding of the world. In Forster’s mind, the status of the artist as an outsider gives him clearer awareness of what’s going on in the world. Though it may be impossible to escape the final destruction, an artist would still insist on his search for order rather than disappear blindly with the “undignified” rotten society.

Ode to the West Wind• Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

• Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! • Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

• The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, • If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• Percy Bysshe Shelley: (1792-1822) great English poets of the Romantic period. He died in a storm when sailing in Mediterranean.

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” -- The Defence of Poetry (Shelley, 1821)

• James Whistler• Nocturne in Black and Gold:The Falling Rocket• 1875

“It seems … ever been …” It seems art has always been so

pertinacious.

internal order

In Forster’s view, “internal order” refers to “something evolved from within”, some “internal stability” or a “vital harmony”. In other words, it appears and exists only with and for its own values, and runs on its own principles of harmony. It is an absolute value very hard to be concretized.