If you are even capable of reading (which I'm starting to doubt), you might care to look at the list given, and the dehumanising quotes. There are plenty more can be given if you really want to see them.


I think you'll find he was a writer of types (and even if you don't count his writings as 'art', then in some sense he was certainly an 'intellectual'). Also enormously influential on a whole host of artists of all types of that period.


You are really on your high horse, aren't you, Reiner? The context was late 19th/early 20th century artists, especially writers. Just so you can see again, maybe be able to read it this time, this was the context:



Do you want more?


You really know very little, don't you? Lawrence first discovered Nietzsche in Croydon Library in 1908 (I don't know if it was the same place as it is now, but it's rather amusing to think of that in such a context), and was profoundly influenced by his work, as vast numbers of Lawrence scholars have examined in detail. The novel Aaron's Rod is a particularly notable example. Most of Lawrence's basic concepts came from Nietzsche, indeed the latter is frequently thought to be the primary influence on Lawrence. And while I haven't read Lawrence's letters and writings (other than the novels) in any detail (mostly because he doesn't interest me greatly) I believe there are plenty of references to Nietzsche in there.

(of course I expect you to snip and ignore the above)

As for Wilde, I don't know of any evidence of an influence, but there are certainly areas of commonality which I could go into if you really want. And that is true of a lot of artists of those period in their rearguard response to the growth of mass suffrage, mass culture, and various other things that threatened to dethrone them from the exalted position they believed they ought to have.



Actually the factors I describe were true of the majority of literary figures of that period, especially but not exclusively British ones (not all of them, for example it would be much harder to make that case of Joyce, with his serious engagements with Irish popular culture in his work). I would suggest you take a look at Carey's book which deals with literary figures of the period 1880-1939, Also Andreas Huyssen's essay 'Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other' in his book After the Great Divide.


Interesting that you complain about the supposed lack of the 'great many artists of the period' about whom you are so precious, but then dislike it also when a list is given.


Once again, learn to read and actually take in something. My response was to some of Wilde's political statements, which are empty (and bollocks). He makes great claims for art, claims to be a socialist, but seems to care more about art than imperialism (does Wilde serve Imperialism?). How Wilde saying 'Aesthetics are higher than ethics' is 'doing my bidding' is a mystery. If you stop ranting for a moment you might see how ridiculous some of this looks.


Maybe (he wrote a fair amount before he was in Reading Gaol). There's every reason to be 'sceptical about the contemporary mores and ethics of his time', but to elevate art over any sort of ethics is an entirely different thing.


You are so upset as you worship at the shrine of Saint Oscar, aren't you, but seem utterly unconcerned by the sentiments of a whole host of artists towards vast numbers of people. But maybe the worst thing in the world is call two statements of an artist 'bollocks'? I don't see how that's on a par with dehumanising masses of people.


Now I think you want to have your cake and eat it, after defending an interpretation of Wilde's views that was indeed about saying people's existences were meaningless. If that is a valid interpretation, that is what I was attacking.

I do agree with you wholeheartedly on that. This is strange!

What a marvellous debater you are, Ian.

My point was that neither Nietschze nor Lawrence had any proven influence on Wilde.

Your ad hominem attacks render the remainder of your post unworthy of further reply.

Can we get back to the music please, chaps?

Regarding "William Tell" in Shostakovich 15, my reading of it is not of Dmitri being witty at all, but in some way I'm not sure I can describe accurately there's something kind of tragically self-deprecating about it. Note that the first appearance of the Rossini material emerges from the end of an exaggeratedly commonplace scrap of a theme which I seem to remember comes from somewhere in DSCH's Sixth, as if to say, yes, yes, I know, some of my themes are so stupid they sound like parodies of Rossini, so you might as well have the whole thing; happy now? (Beckett: "To be an artist is to fail as no other dare fail")

That always seems the big question with Shostakovich - is some of the material 'knowingly' a bit trite, or just simply trite in the normal sense? Or does it make a difference?

I think it's fair to say that Shostakovich knew exactly what he was about, and that hardly anything in his music has a straightforward interpretation. For every "knowingly trite"-seeming moment in his music there's another which seems nakedly poetic, and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that either of those apparent attributes might actually be concealing the other.

If Bartók wasn't quoting Shostakovich, was Shostakovich himself possibly quoting Lehár?

There's a passage in his Thirteenth (1962) which sounds very like a parody of the last movement of Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, although, when I mentioned this before, Ron informed me that Shostakovich is actually quoting another piece of his own which dates from before the Bartók piece. But does that mean it can't possibly be a reference to it as well?

Quotations, at least well-known ones that are obvious, seem to foreground themselves in a way that can override whatever intentions the composer had for them. The William Tell in the Shostakovich always seems to generate the mandatory chuckles, in a way that makes it hard for me to hear it in the way Richard suggests.

Not around here, sir; from the first time I heard it I thought of it as a bleak and sad moment in an obviously death-obsessed work ("this is all I could achieve"). But I am now going to start a new Shostakovich thread since there's much to say that doesn't even fall under the awesomely wide remit of this one.