January 23, 2007
“Vague intellectual pleasure”
Or: My first day back at school:
This is from a 1901 book called Thought Forms, which Conrad Roth explains:
The paintings in this book, by ‘Mr. John Varley [1850-99, grandson of John Varley], Mr. Prince and Miss Macfarlane’, represent the two authors’ [the Theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater] clairvoyant impressions of emotional states in other men and women.
About this particular image, Conrad says,
I was disappointed that vague intellectual pleasure, above, is the dullest-looking of all emotions. I mean really, it’s indefensibly boring, isn’t it? Worth noting, however, [is] that our theosophists’ view of intellectual pleasure anticipates Eliot’s arguments about poetic creation:
Such pure intellectual gratification shows itself in a yellow cloud; and the same effect may be produced by delight in musical ingenuity, or the subtleties of argument. A cloud of this nature betokens the entire absence of any personal emotion, for if that were present it would inevitably tinge the yellow with its own appropriate colour.
More pictures from this book, and intriguing comments about the “real” starting-point for non-representational art in the West, here.
comments
great post, John.
I love that blog, John. I think you turn me on to Roth’s work.
That “[is]” hurts, John, it really does.