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The dancer and the dance: Well said, Bob and Rasik about Shakespeare, Woolf and Joyce. Does the question come down to "Can you separate the dancer from the dance?" Does one have to? If I like a work, do I have to put its creator on a pedestal? Can I like a work irrespective of the fact that its creator had his/her failings? (Mind you these are general questions and do not mean me or you in particular.) Having said that about me in particular! I do not think that it matters if Shakespeare was a racist, as long as he is not considered as somebody to be emulated in that matter. Woolf, certainly had her failings, and perhaps what is great is that she could think so clearly and could come up with such ideas even though she had all kinds of barriers in her mind. Rasik, I wish that I did not have to teach so much, I would have loved to join the discussion list you mention on VW :-( Joyce could have created Bloom as a 'normal' person, because he himself was the 'underdog' for a long time. Here was a kid who lost his way of living, a young man who had to hurt his mother so that he can escape the church, an emigrant ... One of you said this already. As I have not yet met Bloom, let me ask you all would it have mattered to Ulysses if Bloom was not a jew? i.e., how important is his jewishness to the entire work? Finally, I do not have any idea of the sales of Ulysses. I do not doubt that it is extremely readeable. I read, reread lines and chapters and feel that I have not understood a fraction of what is going on. The 'work' I put in in this work made me ask, "Am I influenced by others' judgements?" Right now, my answer is "Not completely", because I can read on the NYtimes website of book reviews the original reviews (often negative ones) of the book, and that does not matter to me! The word "completely" is important though! Chandra Wow, we're really getting into the realms of the nature of art, here. I would say that the dancer is inexorably linked and is part of the dance itself. Without him, the dance can't exist. The dance, for me, cannot exist alone, in its sole form. This is definitely the case with Joyce's work, and course this idea is different in every case. You can't separate the dance from the dancer in JOyce. He, like everyone else in the world, writes from his own personal experience (what else can he do?), and so the sequence of words on the page all are written from his particular viewpoint which is HIS individual, completely unique experince. Take a look, next time you're on a dancefloor. People may dance the same steps, but they all do it differently. I am not saying that the only way you can approach Joyce is by way of literary biography-criticism, but this can be fruitful (read Ellmann). But it is sometimes dangerous to associate a writer's work in a merely biographical, since, as i have said, all work is from personal experience, it is often more useful to look at the work itself, keeping in mind the life of the man which underlies it. I dunno, having said that, i'm startin to think that, since the work (especially one as dense as Ulysses) contains in itself so much of the artist himself that it cAN in one sense be separated from the artist and stand alone - but then we are still looking at something which is intrinsically links he dance and the dancer . . . Having said all that, find a picture of The Parthenon in Greece - who was the artist? We have to separate the dance from the dancer here. Also look at Sailing to Byzantium, where W.B.Yeats talks of a society in which every person in it worked for the greater good of the community. The goldsmith, artificer, muscician, workman all produced a type of art where the dance seemed more important, all striving to perfect living monuments (I'm getting rather obtuse here) where the icon, the image mattered more than anything else. The artist was nameless. If you're remotely interested in art (well, even if you're not) i advise reading E.H. Gombrich's "The Story of Art", an incredible book which i immensely enjoyed - it really enlightened me. Anyway, see what you think, Thanks, Bod Bod, At the end of your message you wrote: "See what you think"! For a moment I thought that you meant to say 'say' instead of 'see' (I am not sure anymore) and I want to say: Basically I think like you that mostly one cannot separate the dancer from the dance. That is particularly so if the 'dance' is great, and of the art created in the 'recent' times. Often the 'dance' becomes mere steps when the dancer keeps himself away from the movement. Like the feeling I had when I saw recently 'Waiting for Godot'. The actors recited the words and that was all. You could feel that for them it was just a play written by somebody else. About Parthenon in Athens (Oh, when do I see all of Europe??) etc: I would like to bring in some examples from my home country - the temples at Belur, Halebid, the thousand pillared hall/ the bathing pond/ the chariot whose wheel is carved out of one stone in Hampi, the gigantic statue of Gomateshwara in Sravanabelagola . .. The list is endless. Nobody knows who the artists (dancers) here were. That is when we cannot do anything else but separate the art from the artist. But in essece the art and the artist are still one - only I cannot recognise it. I would like to add one more reason to what you mentioned as to why we do not know the artists from Athens, from Byzantium. In India at least more importance was given to the art than to the artist. An artist who created something great often thought that he was the mere tool using which 'god' himself created the work. So there was no need to sign the work. That attitude is still prevalent - particularly among the musicians. But all this has little to do with Ulysses. Or does it? Yes, one day I will read Ellmann, Gilbert. One day I would like to read Stanislaus 's My brother's Keeper. Can anybody say something about that book? Chandra |