Re: more
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 04 Jul 1998 19:22:10 +1000
According to my computerside dictionary which predates me by about three
decades :
SUB' LIMATE: *v.t* To purify; to heat into vapour and allow to solidify
again
SUB' LIMATION: *n.* The act of sublimation; in psychoanalysis, an
unconscious process by which the repressed energy is directed into ways of
cultural and social development.
I think both those definitions say a lot really.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
----------
> From: Scottie Bowman <bowman@mail.indigo.ie>
> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> Subject: more
> Date: Friday, 3 July 1998 5:40
>
> For most people, `sublimation' is a Freudian term meaning
> the conversion of unacceptable impulses into more `civilised',
> hopefully more fruitful, expressions.
>
> For the life of me, I couldn't see what its meaning could be
> as used by Will. My simple question was then answered by
> citing two more critics who, so far as we are told, may not use
> the word at all.
>
> Matt's question may be laden with wisdom but to me it just
> sounded like a rather smartypants put-down. And my response
> to it was a plain reiteration of what most people understand as
> the difference between art & criticism. That is to say,
> the difference between the doing & the commenting upon the doing.
>
> Will's question about my reading habits sounds as if it were from
> the same stable. He must have guessed by now how I regard
> the work of professional critics - as purely parasitic. I would
> never wish to encourage such unwholesome activities.
>
> Holden Caulfield was conceived & set going without the slightest
> reference to critics & he has thrived without the slightest help
> from them - except, perhaps, where their quotes have been used
> as aids in marketing. Indeed it's probably only now that he's been
> put on the college syllabus & the poor children are required to read
> the commentaries that he will start to die.
>
> Scottie B.