tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020609400967229954.post7897183701622212025..comments2024-03-27T06:34:24.901-07:00Comments on Goethe Etc.: But is it art?Goethe Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11390542069637659154noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020609400967229954.post-76835444094620377672011-05-23T21:56:01.736-07:002011-05-23T21:56:01.736-07:00Tolstoy, had he lived that long, would have detest...Tolstoy, had he lived that long, would have detested Joyce's "Ulysses," which was all the rage for moralists on the left (Thomas Merton) and on the right (T.S. Eliot). Of course, the great Russian novelist did not trust Shakespeare as a teacher of men--and probably for good reason. Tolstoy renounced his own masterpieces of the 60's and early seventies, if I'm not mistaken (War and Peace and Anna Karenina). I must say there is something in Shakespeare that resists "teaching" in the sense of "instruction." But maybe Tolstoy just did not appreciate the fact that when someone dies in a Shakespearean tragedy, there is a REASON for it. This weekend I read Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace." I had to dig down very deep indeed to find some redeeming value in it; the redeeming value, for me, turned out to be the brilliant writing itself. And perhaps a very indirect "teaching" about grace versus "earning it." And then there's our Faulkner. For some, his nihilism is right up there with the best of them (Sartre liked "The Sound and the Fury"). Cleanth Brooks finds no trace of Christian grace in the early to mid Faulkner; the later one seems to respond to all this criticism in, e.g., I'm told, "The Rievers."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com