Greenwich Village Bohemia: A Winter Wonderland Turns Into An American Renaissance(Part III).
A Ceylonese prince was first to leave. He waited by the church gate And little groups gathered, chattered. Across the street the school children Were playing tag-ball. The ball rolled in front of the innkeeper; He kicked it hard And strode back to his inn." (4)
Darkness seemed to be descending ever so slowly on the artistic scene in the village. In her novel, "The White Album", Joan Dideon is fond of repeating several times that she had stopped visiting New York, because it had become so depressing. Every time that she seemed to visit, she would hear of one her friends dying in some sort of tragic way. The causes for the disentigration of an art scene that seemed to be headed towards even greater heights are varied, but one of the root causes may be discovered into the nature of art itself. In many ways, the modern poets of the beatnick era may have forgotten some of the lessons learned by other artists in earlier eras. In his essay entitled, "Poetics", Aristotle once described art as imitation. In drama, he recalled that the enjoyment of a tragic drama arises from the fact that the audience realizes that the drama on the stage imitates life. When someone is murdered or dies onstage, the spectator understands that the person is not really dead. Hence, they are entertained, while at the same time learning something concerning the true meaning of life. Poetry tends to be written on topics concerning emotion, while history examines factual occurances. Both may use verse or beautiful language. Herodotus, for example, was just as good a poet as Euripedes, but one dealt with a presentation of reality for the emotional state of the mind. The other was only concerned with placing the facts of an event into the recorded conscousness. This idea that art sometimes imitates life is a theme that the beatnick movement may have forgotten. They seemed to be poets seeking their own sanctified Herodotus, and at some point became lost in the self-created reality of their own internal conscousness. What Aristotle understood and his successors in the 17th and 18th centuries inherited was the idea that the art of tragedy did not mean just whallowing around in the depressive mires of the remaining moments of an evening setting sun. They knew that life was a two sided coin with both happy and sad moments. The art of tragedy, whether in poetry or drama not only enlightens an individual, but helps him deal with the realities of the natural world in a humanistic fashion. Joseph Wood Krutch once wrote in his essay, "From The
Latest Articles