Jonny McIntosh wrote: > I reckon your wrong, too. And the above, I think, is the problem. The "is" > is just what you get given to you, e.g. Beethoven's 9th is, even in essence, > Beethoven's entire 9th. What you try and do is distill it into something > "purer" and more "minimal". The terminology is misleading you here, though. > You are just doing something different. No more and no less. That needn't > invalidate anything like the politics or philosophy surrounding the work in > question, though. So you're tone shifting isn't wrong, but it certainly > isn't the essence either. It's just an approach. It's like someone doing an > analysis of Hamlet, say. If the essence of Hamlet were, for example, the > philosophy of self it represents to some, then it would be better expressed > as an essay on the philosophy of self. Obviously, it wouldn't really, > though: the essence of Hamlet is Hamlet. It is what it is.
i'm with the non-reductionists on this one. you can't just compress an artistic piece into its constituent elements and legitimately claim that it represents the essentialist nature of the original, because trying to "accurately" define the fundamental components is ultimately a matter of interpretation. glyn
