sukenick-rival-tradition

September 22, 2024

What I’m writing is not in an avant-garde mode, and certainly not in an experimental mode, and certainly not in an ‘alternative’ mode. It comes out of a rival tradition, and it’s much older and much bigger than the tradition of realist fiction, which only started in the 18th Century. Whereas this rival tradition you can trace all the way back to the epics, Ovid, Rabelais, and even at the beginning of the realist tradition, to Laurence Sterne, and Diderot, and so on. This is a tradition that’s beginning, I think, to break loose again.

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Thought:

“Johannes V. Jensen describes “art” as “soulfully composed form”. That is a definition which is simple and very much to the point. The same goes for the definition the English philosopher Chesterfield gives to the concept of “style.” He says “style is the dress of thoughts.” That is right, provided that “the dress” is not too conspicuous, for a characteristic of good style must be that it enters into such an intimate bond with matter that it is absorbed into a higher unity with it. If it imposes and strikes the eye, it is no longer “style” but “mannerism.””

Carl Theodor Dreyer

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