The responses to my faux
self-deprecatory celebration of my three millionth page view move me to make
some comments about the movie Susie and I saw last Saturday in a free screening
here at Carolina Meadows [complete with free popcorn], viz Amadeus. I had seen the movie before, of course, and
loved it, but this time around it had an unusually powerful effect on me. Indeed, I choked up at several points. In this comment, I am simply going to assume
you have all seen it. [Susie and I also
saw Black Panther this past weekend,
but that is another story entirely.]
It goes without saying that I identified with Salieri. Mozart is presented in the movie as a sport
of nature, a miracle, an alien creature.
It is impossible to identify
with him. But Salieri, especially as portrayed
by F, Murray Abraham in a deservedly Oscar winning performance, is human, all
too human.
The movie works precisely because Salieri is not really a
mediocrity, the closing scene to the contrary notwithstanding. He is
a genuinely accomplished composer, cursed with the ability fully to recognize
and appreciate Mozart’s incomprehensible genius. He is, after all, quite capable of looking at
a score and hearing the music in all
its beauty. And it is those moments in
the film that made me weep. The scene,
for example, in which he looks at the original Mozart scores Constanza brings
to him in an attempt to get him to lobby for a teaching gig that the profligate
spendthrift Mozart needs. Salieri
genuinely loves music, and although his operas are merely competent workmanlike
scores, he is ravished by the beauty he sees on Mozart’s pages and hears in his
mind. That is how I feel when I look
beneath the surface of the Critique
to the beautiful argument hidden within the text. It is how I felt yesterday as I tried to show
the people gathered in the room and those who will view the video the beauty of
Marx’s insight into the mystifications of the capitalist marketplace.
As I have frequently remarked, despite being a political
thinker with beliefs to advance and criticisms to offer, my real pleasure comes
from taking a difficult idea, making it clear to myself until it is transparent
as Jack and the Beanstalk, and then
showing it to a class or a reader so that others can see its beauty as I do.
Oh, the popcorn was good too.
13 comments:
You are doing amazing work! I could not wait for new Marx so I watched all the Kant lectures and most of ideological critique, though until that point I had vague interest in Kant, which I thought was incomprehensible. God I'm addicted to all things Wolff
"...taking a difficult idea, making it clear to myself..."
And I might add -- a genius for re-telling the narrative to your youtube audience. One incidental benefit personally has been re-discovering classics. I've re-read Mansfield Park after watching your videos. Now I will do the same with Critique and Capital.
Just today I started rethinking the arc of my story-telling in my own classes. I will be making changes in the organization and structuring of the material based on your style. Thank you very much.
Having just watched your very clear lecture 4 on Capital, and glanced again at bits of the text, I have to say I don't think Marx's insights on the mystifications of capitalism -- assuming here, for the sake of argument, that those insights are entirely correct -- are beautiful in the way that a Mozart composition is. Marx's insights may be brilliant, incisive, and/or penetrating (pick your adjective), but I don't think I'd call them beautiful. YMMV.
Dear LFC
Not everything can be pretty like sunset or your lover's eyes. If the sun can be pretty so too can a mountain or a bridge or a 400 meter sprint or a mathematical proof. Didn't the Greek term for beauty 'kalon' have wide ambit? I think by beautiful Professor Wolff means something like well made and elegant.
Plus you raise the question whether a Mozart composition has its beauty from it's mathematical structure or the sensation it engenders.
Professor Wolff alluded to how his analysis of Capital combines the literary and the mathematical- so it might not differ from Mozart as much as it first seems
I cannot think of Amadeus without being reminded of this less profound parody of it, which I duly refer to your attention in case distraction is in order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsTZ0eFJMLY
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Aesthetic tastes are "subjective".
The example of Mozart is misleading since almost everyone agrees that Mozart is beautiful (maybe a bit too beautiful, in my opinion), but among music lovers, there is a lot of disagreement about the beauty of other famous composers, for example, of Wagner or of Ravel, not to mention of contemporary composers such as Philip Glass.
My son is getting a doctorate in musical composition, so I can tell you that from personal experience.
I don't find Marx is be beautiful myself. I might call Spinoza's Ethics "beautiful".
But given that aesthetic tastes are "subjective", I wouldn't argue with Professor Wolff's
characterization of Marx as "beautiful".
I watched the parody. It is truly bizarre. Very funny.
Howie Berman has it about right.
H. Berman:
Didn't the Greek term for beauty 'kalon' have wide ambit?
I don't think I even knew that kalon was the Greek term for beauty. If you say it had wide ambit, I'll take your word for it.
----
Btw, we're all aware that Prof Wolff has written his own books on Marx, but there is a v. short book on my shelf that, based on dipping into it, I think is in tune, at least to some extent, with the spirit of Pr. Wolff's lectures, or to be more precise the lectures on Capital: Francis Wheen, Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007). 130 pp., including the index. Wheen has also written a life of Marx.
Speaking of beauty, what was the book that contained the proof of the fixed point theorem that you once cited?
My first girlfriend in college once complained (maybe in a letter to me? I re-read it recently, so perhaps that was it) "why must I always be Salieri and never Mozart?" or something like that. I remember thinking, even at the time, but now even more so that I'm older, that most of us would be really, really, lucky if we could be Salieri - an extremely competent and well respected professional, highly prized in his day and still respected, even if not thought to be great. For most of us, that would be a pretty high goal to set, but maybe not 100% impossible to achieve, and therefore not crazy.
Andrew, it is a famous theorem by the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer. I have no idea where it was first published. My old friend and graduate school apartment mate Charles Parsons would know. I found it in a math text, and at UMass actually taught it as part of a course in which I went through von Neuman's equally famous Fundamental Theorem of Game Theory, which invokes it at a crucial point.
Ah, yes, I recall, hazily, but there, sort of.... But, you used to cite a text book that contained the proof of the fixed point theorem. Perhaps, that is a mnemonic illusion, alas.... Do you recall the text?
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