It is by now something of a commonplace for readers of Blanchot to claim that the limpid quality of his prose and the wealth of allusion woven through even his more opaque writings often have the paradoxical effect of making his work both engagingly lucid and approachable and utterly resistant to interpretation or even comprehension in any ordinary sense. At the core of this paradoxical experience is a theory of creativity that Blanchot frequently alludes to and often appears to be (...) about to reveal before allowing it to vanish into what he calls his “third night,” a darkness beyond both day and night, being and non-being, from which the artist, writer or composer draws the inspiration required for both the initiation and completion of the textual artefact or, as will be argued here, the musical event. Focusing on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that Blanchot outlines most fully in “The Gaze of Orpheus,” and deploying this writer’s own theory and practice of xenosonics, the fundamental question here will be – and to borrow from his friend Bataille – the “use-value” of Blanchot’s evasive theory of creativity for the creator of music, text or art. (shrink)

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has in recent years received attention from Heurgon, Norden, Guthrie, Linforth, and Ziegler, who have in different ways supplemented the admirable article by Gruppe in Roscher's Lexikon published fifty years ago. Unless new texts or new monuments are found, it does not seem likely that fresh evidence will be forthcoming to solve old problems, and our task is rather to make a constructive use of what evidence we have. This paper attempts to consider (...) only one part of the whole question, the versions of the story which lie behind the familiar form. Much said here is not new, but perhaps the attempt to sort out some points is worth making, especially as the experts disagree on several important matters. (shrink)

The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In Aristophanes’ Wasps, Philocleon says that he and his fellow jurors do not acquit Oeagrus until he has recited a speech from the Niobe. Scholars have almost universally assumed that this was the name of a contemporary tragic actor, despite its extreme rarity. This article argues that the reference is rather to the father of Orpheus. As a figure from the generation before the archetypal bard, ‘an Oeagrus’ represents the old-fashioned poetry to which Philocleon and his fellow jurors are (...) devoted. (shrink)

Paul Stenner and Michel Weber (eds.), Orpheus’ Glance. Selected papers on process psychology. The Fontarèches meetings, 2002–2017, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2018 (ISBN 978-2-930517-54-4, ISBN PDF, 326 pp., 30€). -/- The Whitehead Psychology Nexus is an international open forum dedicated to the cross-examination of Alfred North Whitehead’s “organic” or “process” philosophy and the various facets of the contemporary psychological field of research and debate. It seeks to mutually inform psychology and Whitehead scholarship by encouraging psychologists to research in a Whiteheadian (...) atmosphere and Whitehead scholars to engage with psychology. Bold speculations balanced by “complete humility before logic, and before fact” (Process and Reality, 1929, corr. ed., p. 17) are especially valued. The WPN Workshops were launched in 2002 in Fontarèches (France). The provocative papers gathered here are of two kinds: on the one hand, philosophical discussions of the present state of affairs in psychology lato sensu; and, on the other hand, critical studies of the relevance of the imaginative generalizations of Whitehead for psychology and of the impact of contemporary psychology on Whitehead’s system of thought. -/- Dr Paul Stenner is Professor of Social Psychology at the School of Psychology, The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK). Dr Michel Weber is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Educational Foundations, The University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Ca). (shrink)

This essay offers a novel approach for understanding the poetry of negritude and its role in the struggle for black liberation by appealing to Giambattista Vico’s insights on the historical, cultural, and myth-making function of poetry and of the mythopoetic imagination. The essay begins with a discussion of Vico’s aesthetic historicism and of his ideas regarding the role of imagination, poetry, and myth-making and then brings these ideas to bear on the discussion of the function of negritude poetry, focusing primarily (...) on the writings of Aimé Césaire and on Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, Black Orpheus. (shrink)

The man in a Thracian outfit represented on a hydria in London as eating a dead child has been interpreted either as a Titan with Zagreus or Lycurgus with his son. Neither of these interpretations seems plausible, especially in light of our present knowledge about sacrificial rules. As I argue, the image is more likely to be inspired by a story dramatized in the Lycurgeia of Aeschylus, in which an advent of Dionysus to the country ruled by Lycurgus caused an (...) epidemic of cannibalism. With much likelihood, this motif was also present in a passage — unfortunately only partially preserved — in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (21.117–123). This mythical crisis was subsequently solved by Orpheus, which seems clear from passages in Aristophanes, Horace and Themistius, who allude to a rationalized version of this story. (shrink)

Sharpe, Matthew Let me begin with words from a different, more optimistic time: 'For it may be truly affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never throughlights made in it, till the age of us and our fathers. For although they had knowledge of the antipodes,... yet that might be by demonstration, and not in fact; and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of (...) half the globe. But to circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor enterprised till these later times: and therefore these times may justly bear in their word, not only plus ultra, in precedence of the ancient non ultra,... but likewise imitabile c lum ; in respect of the many memorable voyages after the manner of heaven about the globe of the earth. And this proficience in navigation and discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further proficience and augmentation of all [the] sciences; because it may seem they are ordained by God to be coevals, that is, to meet in one age. For so the prophet Daniel speaking of the latter times foretelleth, 'Many shall pass over, and knowledge shall be increased': as if the openness and circumnavigation of the world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages; as we see it is already performed in great part: the learning of these later times not much giving place to the former two periods or returns of learning, the one of the Greeks, the other of the Romans...'. (shrink)

"In 'Mag ik Orpheus zijn?' legt Esther Jansma messcherp uit wat het lezen en schrijven van poëzie en proza voor haar inhoudt. Wat betekent het om 'ik' te zeggen in een gedicht, mag een tekst worden herleid tot de persoon van de maker, in hoeverre wordt wat wij 'het leven' noemen bepaald door wat we hebben gelezen, zijn er grenzen aan de verbeelding en waar zouden die dan moeten liggen, wie bepaalt wat wel en niet mag of kan in (...) een tekst? Voor deze essays bewerkte zij vier lezingen die zij in Berkeley en als gastschrijver aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen heeft gegeven."--Back cover. (shrink)

This book defines, through a survey of the European tradition of literature, art, poetry, and music, some of the philosophical and psychological implications and developments of that myth.

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