Maxims (Part 1) Taken from Twitter - Iain James Robb
You can tend to recognise the difference between a good and mediocre mind by observing how each reacts to a misfired original idea.The mediocre mind will praise the merely meretricious, but ignore the more interesting bad art. The higher mind will value the misfired workmanship higher if it derives from the transcription of a higher idea. Geniuses are not born so. This superior and often pretentiously expressed means of bearing is generally developed. Genius is the eventual correlation through maturity of what one says one is, with how one expresses it.
A little puerility is valuable in independent studies of one's maturity in gauging the importance to society of being incorrect.
What is instantly predictable is of more immediate value to a society even though people won't admit to being lovers of predictability. But what is unpredictable in art and science dictates to man his new schemata, or stigmata; all predictability is simply witness to the fact.
The only true yardstick of one's path against the bastions of eternity is one's pursuance of duty, but many people misconstrue the object of duty haplessly, and mistake it for society, which is merely a subject of duty's compromise. True prerogatives are usually more subtle than an august air through winter grass.
It is the opposite of selfishness to recognise oneself through the devotion of one's abilities to recognition of all selves: and we observe it in the mirror. 'What is me is you in me." Socialism's answer would be, "What is me is not me but you and you." This is a faulty answer. No-one is tailored to be purely other selves.A self that is tailored to only be non-theirselves is not only not themself but can't be others also. And the others are reflections of an anti-daydream extending only as far as anyone is incapable of knowing the difference between two grey words.
Philistinism is a solipsistic art form perpetrated by the criminally indifferent against those who indifferently care.
What is moral duty in some may be of moral disapprobation in others, but good ideas will usually have the benefit of human curiosity.
A little puerility is valuable in independent studies of one's maturity in gauging the importance to society of being incorrect.
What is instantly predictable is of more immediate value to a society even though people won't admit to being lovers of predictability. But what is unpredictable in art and science dictates to man his new schemata, or stigmata; all predictability is simply witness to the fact.
The only true yardstick of one's path against the bastions of eternity is one's pursuance of duty, but many people misconstrue the object of duty haplessly, and mistake it for society, which is merely a subject of duty's compromise. True prerogatives are usually more subtle than an august air through winter grass.
It is the opposite of selfishness to recognise oneself through the devotion of one's abilities to recognition of all selves: and we observe it in the mirror. 'What is me is you in me." Socialism's answer would be, "What is me is not me but you and you." This is a faulty answer. No-one is tailored to be purely other selves.A self that is tailored to only be non-theirselves is not only not themself but can't be others also. And the others are reflections of an anti-daydream extending only as far as anyone is incapable of knowing the difference between two grey words.
Philistinism is a solipsistic art form perpetrated by the criminally indifferent against those who indifferently care.
What is moral duty in some may be of moral disapprobation in others, but good ideas will usually have the benefit of human curiosity.
Unless the population happens to be qualitatively stupid, in which case individuals happen to have their way.
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Excellent. It makes me want to write more poetry, something I've been putting off.
Thanks.
"Geniuses are not born so"
Yes they are.
Genius is expressed in a successful marriage of aptitude and attitude.
Charles and Matthew - Those comments are correct as well.
I'll always view the mirror through a purely dialectical lens, but I appreciate what you're saying here.*
The question is where are all the literary/musical geniuses of today?
No...the real question is...
what in the name of all that is holy is a "misfired original idea"?!
Or "peurility"?
or "solpisistic"?
or "preogatives:?
and what exactly is a "bastian of eternity"?
Forgive me, for I have revealed that my lack of genius (whether innate or acquired) is insufficient for me to absorb this advanced level of discourse.....
I must away now, and carve a few more bison on my cave wall.
:)
Oh, and while I'm at it...
what is 'disapprobriation'?
The auto-correct on my stone tablet put a grey squiggly line under it. Strange.
This is usual, Sally. You'll get better at things if you practice them. :)
Sally go round the roses...
Dispprobriation is a nonce word. Some of my neologisms are good, though. 'Fallarous', for instance, from the Latin 'fallare', meaning false.
What I meant by 'misfired original ideas' is the difference between a mediocrity like Seamus Heaney and and Theophilus Marzials, who actually had talent. I would sooner take an imperfect interesting poet over a mundane one, generally.
I love HP Lovecraft, for instance, but I do admit quite readily that this is a demonstration of bad taste.
I sgree. It is too often that the workshop type poetry (in which everything is spelled out and is technically adept but the meanings are mundane) that gets praised. People in a PC society do not like to be challenged, they resent it, viciously.
The poet should be a trickster of sorts, not giving people that which they want and already have.
What passes for great poetry these days is just self indulgent nonsense that reinforces people's narcissism.
Corrected my typing errors and made a few changes pointed out among my pannings. I don't really feel too bad about my typing skills however. Not that I'm putting myself in their company, but there are numerous examples of great writers, Hemingway, Austen and Hart Crane among them, who actually couldn't spell. Austen couldn't even use grammar properly. There is a reason after all for proof readers.