the act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. a longing to transcend. what we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. art is our portal to the unseen world.
- rick rubin
ISSUE I
SPRING EDITION
theme: KATHARSIS
κάθαρσις
29th March - 14th June
- don't forget to read our guidelines -
⚜ tragedy - pity - fear - repression - cultivation - intellect - eudaimonia - virtu - fortuna - destiny - greek philosophy - theatre - repressed emotion - shame - what happens after the curtain drops? the audience sits in the emotions it has been burdened with. we don't see the characters again but, oh, do we feel them ⚜
research starting points:
Aristotle's Politics
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Russian literature
Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
⚜ Coined in greek philosophy, katharsis is used in dramatic art and tragedy to symbolise the effect that a performance has on the audience.
"It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions." (F. L. Lucas 1927)
From the greek κάθαρσις (kathairein) meaning 'to cleanse or purge'. Katharsis was first used in Homeric purification rituals (subsequently, the work katharos became common in Greek). Said to be derived from the semitic word 'qatar' (to fumigate), purification rituals physically and spiritually cleansed those who were impure from blood or other contaminations. Warriors would routinely take baths to cure themselves of the grime of the battlefield. in the tragedy of Orestes, the blood of a piglet was washed over the blood-polluted man, then running water washed away the blood.
In Platonism, katharsis was part of the soul’s progressive ascent to knowledge. The idea of going beyond the senses, embracing the pure world of the intelligible. Katharsis was closely linked with mimesis - imitation of reality. Plato asserted that forms of artistic mimesis were designed to evoke from an audience powerful emotions such as pity, fear, and ridicule, overriding the rational control that defines the highest level of our humanity and leading us to wallow unacceptably in the overindulgence of emotion and passion
Conversely, Aristotle believed that the pleasure of mimesis is the intellectual pleasure of learning and inference, and that it symbolised more of a rational control over irrational emotions.
"And since we accept the classification of melodies made by some philosophers, as ethical melodies, melodies of action, and passionate melodies […] it serves the purpose both of education and of purgation [κάθαρσις] […] it is clear that we should employ all the harmonies, yet not employ them all in the same way, but use the most ethical ones for education, and the active and passionate kinds for listening to when others are performing […] for any experience that occurs violently in some souls is found in all, though with different degrees of intensity—for example pity and fear, and also religious excitement […] thrown into a state as if they had received medicinal treatment and taken a purge [καθάρσεως] […] all must undergo a purgation [κάθαρσις] and a pleasant feeling of relief; and similarly also the purgative [κάθαρσιν] melodies afford harmless delight to people...”
⚜ editor's note
I want a focus on rhythm - words that could almost be sung. When I read aloud your work I want to feel the drums pulsing in time with my heart beat, words that intrinsically provide me with something more than just words. I'm not talking about rhyme necessarily, sometime it's overdone for want of rhythm. The Greek tragedies didn't rhyme, but they were remembered. Shakespearean monologues are similar, in that they appeal to a person's very biology (iambic pentameter).
"By 'language embellished 'I mean language into which rhythm, harmony, and song enter." (Aristotle)
Think: emotions on Greek kraters, sacrificial offerings, the purging of emotion, the burden on the theatre viewer. The feeling of pathos that you receive from listening to a heart-wrenching poem or song, or watching the events of a tragedy unfold. The most cultivated people are the most repressed - how do they go about being purged of their repressed emotions? Why? What drives them? Is this ruled by shame? Desire? A craving? Were bacchanals and rituals a way of katharsis for the cultivated Greek citizen? How does this parallel other cultures? What is it that scares cultivated people the most? Think of the maenads, free of all obligation and social convention, galloping gleefully through thickets and forests, head tilted back, neck to the stars.