That Beowulf ms is the first preserved instance we have of it being written, which is indeed wonderful, but it's not the Ur Original of the poem. There might not even have really been such a thing.
Agreed. (Don't get me started on Homeric epic.) I think it's fair to talk about the power of original objects; it's real and it matters to me, because it's tangible history. I don't think it's helpful to conflate the medium with the message as drastically as the author of the article did:
"I've spent years dreaming of these books, but when all five of us finally met I couldn't do anything but cry. I thought I knew them, through digital replicas. These books should have been a mirror, some kind of catalyst to self-recognition. But when I looked at them I saw nothing. I only saw the yawning void of everything in human history that I cannot understand, everything that has been taken from our culture by the incredible acceleration of technology over the course of my lifetime."
It isn't technology that took that understanding from her. It's time; it's the frailty of memory and continuity; it's the gaps between one person and the next, between one generation and the next, between one culture and the next; it's all the things you can never know about someone even if you can read their handwriting for yourself. It's reasonable to grieve that, to be knocked off your feet by the evidence in person. It's not reasonable to blame the internet.
(And you should never expect someone else's art or material culture to be your mirror. You can find things in it that resonate with you and you have the right to hold on to them, but—literally—it was not made for you.)
It's like that whole cult of Originality goes along with the myth of the Genius Lone Artist and makes me twitch.
I guess it's good to know that Romanticism is alive and well in the New Republic, but did this have to be the way it manifested?
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Date: 2018-11-12 08:27 pm (UTC)From:Agreed. (Don't get me started on Homeric epic.) I think it's fair to talk about the power of original objects; it's real and it matters to me, because it's tangible history. I don't think it's helpful to conflate the medium with the message as drastically as the author of the article did:
"I've spent years dreaming of these books, but when all five of us finally met I couldn't do anything but cry. I thought I knew them, through digital replicas. These books should have been a mirror, some kind of catalyst to self-recognition. But when I looked at them I saw nothing. I only saw the yawning void of everything in human history that I cannot understand, everything that has been taken from our culture by the incredible acceleration of technology over the course of my lifetime."
It isn't technology that took that understanding from her. It's time; it's the frailty of memory and continuity; it's the gaps between one person and the next, between one generation and the next, between one culture and the next; it's all the things you can never know about someone even if you can read their handwriting for yourself. It's reasonable to grieve that, to be knocked off your feet by the evidence in person. It's not reasonable to blame the internet.
(And you should never expect someone else's art or material culture to be your mirror. You can find things in it that resonate with you and you have the right to hold on to them, but—literally—it was not made for you.)
It's like that whole cult of Originality goes along with the myth of the Genius Lone Artist and makes me twitch.
I guess it's good to know that Romanticism is alive and well in the New Republic, but did this have to be the way it manifested?