Neurology of the Arts

Neurology of the Arts: Painting, Music, Literature (April 2004) edited by F Clifford Rose: This book is the first attempt to provide a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature....The section on literature relates to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, James Joyce, and the poetry of one of England's most famous neurologists, Henry Head.

[pdf] The Neurology of Art--The Example of Giorgio de Chirico by Julien Bogousslavsky:

Blanke and Landis emphasize how a neurological condition undoubtedly influenced the work of one of the greatest modern artists. Since a disease may help understand artistic features, and art may help understand the manifestations of diseases, further studies in the 'neurology of art' would certainly be interesting and useful.

Style follows content: On the microgenesis of art perception (November 2007) by M Dorothee Augustin, Helmut Leder, Florian Hutzler, and Claus-Christian Carbon: While effects of content were present at all presentation times, effects of style were traceable from 50 ms onwards. The results show clear differences in the microgenesis of style and content, suggesting that in art perception style follows content.

Edwin Morgan on Iain Crichton Smith

The Contribution of Iain Crichton Smith (2000) by Edwin Morgan:

Things that restrict and stifle have always been Smith’s target. In his own upbringing, the long arm of the Free Church became the focus of deep feelings of enmity which permeate many of his poems. The claim to be right, the claim to have the truth, the despising of pleasure, the indifference to art, the willingness to condemn and if possible punish the slightest backsliding, the inability to compromise, and perhaps worst of all, the incomprehension of any conception of creative change or growth: these were damning factors in Smith’s eyes.

'The Gaelic Proverb' (quoted in the above essay):

The Gaelic proverb says,
sad is the state of the house
without a child or cat.

But sad is the state of the child
who carries his house on his back
like a trapped snail.

And the cat who cannot go out
into the deep greenery
but sits on the spinster's lap
narrow and infertile,
as the wild sun goes down.

[pdf] Real People in a Real Place (1982): The islander has never had the chance of staying where he is: history has condemned him to departure, and afterwards to the choice of whether or not to return.

Nick Joaquin on Filipino Smallness

A Heritage of Smallness by Nick Joaquin:

The depressing fact in Philippine history is what seems to be our native aversion to the large venture, the big risk, the bold extensive enterprise. The pattern may have been set by the migration. We try to equate the odyssey of the migrating barangays with that of the Pilgrim, Father of America, but a glance of the map suffices to show the differences between the two ventures. One was a voyage across an ocean into an unknown world; the other was a going to and from among neighboring islands. One was a blind leap into space; the other seems, in comparison, a mere crossing of rivers. The nature of the one required organization, a sustained effort, special skills, special tools, the building of large ships. The nature of the other is revealed by its vehicle, the barangay, which is a small rowboat, not a seafaring vessel designed for long distances on the avenues of the ocean.

[pdf] Who Owns Nick Joaquin Now? (July 2004): Who owns the copyrights to Nick Joaquin's extensive works, now that he has died, gotten cremated, and romantically gone to the eternal beer garden?

Philippine Graphic reissued 'Bat Lake', Joaquin's last novel (2004).

Douglas Dunn on Creative Writing Programmes

[pdf] Douglas Dunn interview (The Dark Horse, 1999) by Gerry Cambridge:

DD: A lot of reviewing in the literary magazines as opposed to the newspapers, strikes me as being done by post-graduates who are actually printing a chunk of a thesis. By and large I think Universities are a good thing, because I work in one; but their influence on literature is not always good. GC: Why? DD: It academises it. Full stop. Nothing more to say, really. So a writer who works in a university has to protect him or herself. Kathleen Jamie and John Burnside have just been appointed to the School of English in St Andrews, to teach creative writing. I’ll have to look after them. Make sure they don’t get into bad habits. GC: Was St Andrews the first University in Scotland to institute a degree in creative writing? DD: Yes. It’s a one year post-graduate course; it started in 1993. GC: In America creative writing courses are ubiquitous. Some critical opinion over there feels that’s a negative thing. If there were many more creative writing courses in Scottish Universities would it be healthy? DD: Perhaps not. But I don’t think every University needs to have one; there isn’t the market. We get by because we attract quite a lot of Americans who are disenchanted with what’s on offer in the USA. And they want to come and study at St Andrews, in a different culture. And it’s not sitting around talking about your feelings. If they do the poetry course with me then they have to learn versification, as well as study poetry of the past; one of the essays they have to write is on the history of Blank Verse, in Blank Verse. Or they could do a history of the rhyming couplet in rhyming couplets. GC: And how long does this history have to be? DD: At least 150 lines. GC: You mentioned earlier that some of these students can’t study Robert Frost at an American University. That seems an extraordinary situation. DD: Absolutely. If it continues, American culture, never mind American poetry, will go down the drain.

A Removal from Terry Street from Terry Street (1969):

On a squeaking cart, they push the usual stuff,
A mattress, bed ends, cups, carpets, chairs,
Four paperback westerns. Two whistling youths
In surplus U.S. Army battle-jackets
Remove their sister’s goods. Her husband
Follows, carrying on his shoulders the son
Whose mischief we are glad to see removed,
And pushing, of all things, a lawnmower.
There is no grass in Terry Street. The worms
Come up cracks in concrete yards in moonlight.
That man, I wish him well. I wish him grass.

More on Arlindo Correia with Portugese translations (2004).