A thought before one blows their nose

The Idea of the Autonomous Artwork Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry 

Poetry is taken up now and we take up some classic philosophers' take on what poets do. Plato takes a curious realist stance. Maybe he isn't a realist but he suggests that poets are realists who do such a terrible job that he calls them liars. Aristotle however sees a different viewpoint in that poets project an ideal point of view. In this way a poem contains its own world and has nothing that is verifiable and in that light not lying but not saying anything truthful. 

This seems to reflect what was discussed in the last lecture where truth and meaning were in conflict. It also has similarities with learning and how we have preconceptions. The poem seems to embody these preconception in a world where they are not challenged by what obviously does not fit.

The idea of poetry is discussed further. The professor brings to mind these intense modes of thinking such as religious morality and blinding passion. He brings these up to distance them from what poetry is and wraps it in the idea of aesthetics. This is a curious state of existence that can be observed by concentrating on something we consider art.

This aesthetic experience is more or less what we call judgement where something appears to be just right. This judgement seems to be a separate thing from passion or morality the way he speaks of it seems curiously isolated when expressed and latent when things are otherwise.

P. 9-29 Ulysses James Joyce 

The opening of the book starts at the top of a stair case with a mirror. We become acquainted with a dead mother and are invited to a pauper's drinking party. There is a agitation and sparing without the sense of any warlike attitudes between the characters of Stephen Daedalus and Buck Mulligan. Humility perfumes everything the characters have said so far.

The character's introduced are firstly Buck Mulligan who is a doctor in training and maybe a messenger of things that are bodily in a way that treats the body as if it is dead as if he were some messenger from the underworld. Stephen is characterized as an artist whose first aesthetic feat is to compare the Irish people to a cracked mirror. We also have some sort of interloper who more or less is a person who is there and is English.

There is somewhat of an abusive relationships to mothers and it is transformed in a variety of ways. The first is the obvious mother of Stephen Daedalus who he wont give her peace of mind in the final moments of his life. In this there is a sense of something conquered perhaps some sort of antagonizing bond that had to deal with the mother's religion and a hindrance to Stephen's ambition to be the Bard people call him with a sense of irony. The second iteration is the sea which maybe what replaces Stephen's pious mother with one that is ancient and full of unconscious energy. But even this earth mother is disparaged and likened to a snot rag. The third is the humiliated milk lady who in her old age has shrivelled breasts and relies on cows to nurse men past their baby days who stiff her money so they can go drinking.

There also maybe something of a innuendo with Buck Mulligan's shaving knife and the snot rag that he commandeers from Stephen to wipe it clean of foam and hair. This might be a mating between the two characters who will give birth to the stories form. The marriage of a man who cannot tell a mother from a corpse and a man who tries to profit from a cracked mirror.