An Anaesthetic Aesthetic: Emacipation of the Consonance.

 

 

 

In the history of Art, and by "Art" I mean in particular one art, and allied dignities, one geologic in analogy feature stands, or rather dips,  a grand chasm, or canyon, between a North Rim and a South Rim:  to the north lies romanticism, and yawning years of a tradition of pain, the painful represented, or rather actually presented in dissonance, and definite, and defined.

 

To the south, a sunnier less seasonal and altogether more reliably rational country lies, spreads, out in a plain.  Less concerned with "climb every mountain" and reaching, wrestling, as if for Jacob's Ladder. 

 

Impressionism. An emancipation of the consonance to, remain, "lush" befoliaged, green and growing less like Firs' Forests than like first forests, as seen in prehistoric, or even Permian processions and pageants, of Life Through the Ages. Aloof, allied with drifting clouds and shining Moon, and timeless tides and waves as wide or wider than life itself, rather than in the thick of it, of rough and tumble. The here and now dreaming. only dreaming of the long ago.

 

One might think of romanticism as (Romantics? They serve as spies for) "the centaur-like aliens, the more advanced race with whom the humans interact."

 

While impressionism is free, floating, as free as air jellyfish: "the floating, gasbag-like aliens are called "hobgoblin balloons" by the human characters." 

 

Into the mix strides, Mahler, Gustav, who heals the wound, bridges the gulf, sails the seas (and the airs) with indefatigable ... gullibility?

 

I think not.

 

 

 

 

 

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