Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Art, Mimesis and Aristotle

Our word, mimic, is rooted in the ancient Greek term mimesis, which has also entered the English language.  From Wikipedia:  Mimesis, the imitation of life or nature in the techniques and subject matter of art and literature

Aristotle demonstrated that mimesis is the characteristic that distinguishes art from craft--the fine arts from all other productive technologies.  Mimesis is the skill the artist employs to produce a work of art, the representation of specific slices of reality--slices chosen and carefully selected by the artist.  Aristotle develops this view of mimesis throughout the Poetics, and in typical fashion explores just about every aspect of its use in producing art. 

Plato was probably the first to lead Aristotle down the path of esthetics--the study of art.  As was often the case, Aristotle grasped the theme that his teacher introduced and explored it more thoroughly and beyond the scope of anything dreamt of by anyone at the Academy, many times in direct opposition to Platonic philosophy. 

This is the general view--that Aristotle learned much of what he was to later develop from Plato and the philosophical talk at the Academy, a view that I accept only to a certain degree.  There's little evidence that this was always the case, and in his study of art as well as biology there are other factors that probably influenced Aristotle.   He was the son of the physician and--according to tradition--friend to King Amyntus of Macedon (Father to Philip, grandfather to Alexander the Great).  Aristotle certainly had read and listened to performances of Homer and others long before leaving the North.  From early childhood, Aristotle may have spent time at the Macedonian court in Pella, and it's known that Euripides was welcomed there generations before.  With this connection and the possibility of a library of Euripidean works--and maybe some esthetic studies going on at Pella--one can at least speculate that Aristotle learned quite a bit about Greek drama prior to going to Athens.

Old Book Images

Free for non-commercial use.  I posted a batch of book images on Flickr, closeups, edge shots, stacked, pages, a couple with USB cords sticking out of the pages. 

These four books are from my Aristotle collection, not all the oldest, but my faves in the group, including a 1550 Madius edition of Aristotle's Poetics, and the big volume below, Operum Aristotelis Tomus II Guillelmo Laemario edition published in Lyon in 1597--I think this is really cool:  the front cover is stamped with the crest of the Duke of Saxony, and the back is stamped with the crest of the Holy Roman Emporer.  Here's the colophon.  The interior shot on the left is from the oldest book in my collection, a Latin trans. of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, printed in Venice on June 25th 1516.  More about this edition here.

Here's the thumbnail block.  Click here to go to Flickr to check them out full-sized.

For the love of...

Some people love money, some people love rock and roll, others it's ice cream, chocolate is often thought of amorously--or at least for a good fondling.  Hmmm.  I'm pretty fond of all those, but there's a special place in my heart for books.  (Just a little for books, and all the rest is for Alice). Old books.  I have some oldies. 

Here's the colophon and the first page of a Latin translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, printed in the wonderful city of Venice on June 25th, 1516.  We're talking a handful of years after Christopher Columbus set sail...uh...across the ocean blue.  This one's the oldest book on my shelves.  Printer's mark: The circle with a double cross with the letters O.S.M, the initials of Octavianus Scotus Modoetiensis--Ottaviano Scoto of Monza.

Click the pics to see rather large versions of them.

.

Aristotle on the value of biology and Heraclitus taking a dump

Here's Aristotle trying to convince his largely aristocratic students that studying the "less valuable animals," such as fish and rodents and hen's eggs (Not just cavalry horses and lions) is a valuable pastime in itself.  There are things to learn about their actions, the habitats in which they thrive, their eating, sleeping, mating behavior.  Aristotle--before there was a science of biology--had to go out of his way to make it clear that examining all animals and their ways is a worthy exercise.

Read this passage from Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium):

(PA I 5, 645a4)  For this reason we should not be childishly disgusted at the examination of the less valuable animals. For in all natural things there is something marvelous. Even as Heraclitus is said to have spoken to those strangers who wished to meet him but stopped as they were approaching when they saw him warming himself at the oven—he bade them to enter without fear, ‘For there are gods here too’—so too one should approach research about each of the animals without disgust, since in every one there is something natural and good.

Here's what's really cool about this passage.  The phrase "warming himself at the oven" is thought to be slang referring to going to the bathroom, i.e., sitting on the pot, taking a dump.  "There are gods here too."  Heraclitus' use of "gods" doesn't refer to actual divinities, but to processes worth discovering, exploring--the idea that some value may be gained by studying what would be considered the lowest of functions of the body.

Of course, another quote--the very famous fragment--from Heraclitus has him saying, "Everything flows..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
http://www.non-contradiction.com/2007/09/on-the-parts-of.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/

.

Writers Love Books

I'm a huge fan of ebooks.  I want them to succeed.  I've been using a Sony Reader (PRS-500) regularly for about ten months, and I love it.  I think it works, it fits in my hand, it has the right weight, the eInk display is so page-like.  It's not backlit like a computer screen.  It's like a real book--so much so that book lights work well with it.  I don't buy ebooks nearly as often as I buy print books, but I do shop at Fictionwise and Amazon (for ebooks as well as print).

And then again...it's not quite a real book.

I also collect books.  Real books.  I specialize in a few areas, but my prizes are all works of Aristotle.  I have well over two-hundred books by, on, about Aristotle, Aristotle's philosophical works, his place in the universe, on Aristotelian commentators.  I have books printed in 2007.  I have books printed in the early 1500's.  The oldest was printed on the 25th of July, 1516 by the family of the famous Venetian printer Ottaviano Scoto.   (The printer's mark of Ottaviano Scoto is a circle with a double cross with the letters O.S.M, the initials of Octavianus Scotus Modoetiensis--Ottaviano Scoto of Monza).

It's the oldest in my collection, but it's not my favorite, which is a 1550 Madius edition of Aristotle's Poetics.  I pulled it out of the bookcase tonight, which I don't do often enough, and I just flipped through the pages, smelled 457 years of book.  It's a big book, folio sized, with stiff end boards.  It's in Greek and Latin.  It is astoundingly beautiful--so beautiful in fact, that I cannot imagine it ever being supplanted by anything as square and plastic and electronic as an eReader.  Perhaps used in combination with devices able to store, search and display thousands of books, but not displaced.  Never displaced.

I have a pretty wild imagination, but I can't imagine it happening.

In case you're wondering, the name of this blog, Theophrastus, comes from the name of a friend and student of Aristotle.

IF: moon

Study the moon in ancient Athens.  Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday topic: moon.  Three Athenian gentleman trying to settle an argument over what causes the shadow on the moon.  Is it the earth blocking the rays of Helios? 

I thought it would be cool to knock out the Acropolis with the centered temple of Athena Parthenos against the night sky.  Not really sure if I pulled it off.  Watercolor on 300# hotpressed.  Detail view below.  Click the pics to see them larger.

Detail:

11k into Aristotle

Okay, I spent the weekend painting more than writing, but I'm back at it with the first four chapters of my YA Aristotle novel, a solid 11,000 words in the last week--and another 20k in pretty rough shape I've culled from an old Aristotle novel. Not sure how much of this stuff I'm going to use.

I've done something a little different this time.  I wrote my query letter early.  It's done.  I expect to rewrite it at some point, and it will get a few more passes--more than most of my query letters do.  What's strange is that it was much easier to write.  Not sure if it's because I'm just getting better at building a query letter or if there's something about tapping into all the this-is-going-to-be-the-coolest-story-ever energy at the beginning stages of a novel.

25 Editions

A week ago or so I blogged about the number of fiction writing books I have on the shelves, but I left out the greatest of them all:  Aristotle's Poetics, which, even in its incomplete state, has a lot to say on plotting, characterization, and the nature of art.  Because it's Aristotle, I've gone crazy and, over the years, have purchased just about every edition I could find, at least twenty-five of them, different translations and texts.

The folio on the bottom is the prize of my collection, the 1550 Madius edition of the Poetics.  Just above that is Twining's two volume translation with commentary (1700's).  I have an 1830's Bekker edition.  I have a dozen and a half more.  I'm missing some from the pic.  I have a Castelvetro edition that's somewhere on the shelves.  I also left out a 1597 Riccobono Latin trans.  I didn't include any of the pure commentaries or volumes on the Poetics—if they didn't include a translation.  However, that Averroes' Middle Commentary slipped in somehow when I was selecting the books.

If you want to read some online editions:  http://www.non-contradiction.com

Plato was right!

Well, sort of.  There is no world of the Forms, no other place stuffed with reified abstractions that reflect dimly into our world.  That part of it's nonsense. 

Aristotle understood the nature of things.  I'm thinking of Raphael's School of Athens where Plato is pointing up to some imaginary World of Forms and Aristotle is holding his hand level, basically telling his teacher, "Settle down there, old man.  You don't need to wander off to another world.  It's all right in front of you.  You just have to get out of your cave once in a while." 

Yup.  Perfection is here in the real world.  You just have to look for it.  But sometimes chance throws you one and you stumble on it.

 

My son, Christopher, has proof.  He found the Form of Acorn in the woods.  He found the archetype.  This is the acorn that all other acorns in the universe strive to become.  This is the Form of Acorn.  This is the Parmenidean One of Acorns.  This acorn says "look on me and despair all you other acorns, for you will never be as pure or perfect as me.  You may share in my acornness, but don't push it."  This acorn, as beautiful as it is, has an attitude.   

I can't wait to see the oak!

If only. . .

this wasn't a Photoshop trick.  Aristotle action figure.  I particularly like "Aris-Total Destruction."

http://www.geocities.com/krinklyman2/aristotle.html