Weil and Aeschylus
Publication Type |
Book Chapter |
Year of Publication |
1995 |
Author |
|
Book |
Literary Power and the Criteria of Truth |
Pages |
13-27 |
Publisher |
University Press of Florida |
Place Published |
Gainsville |
Language |
English |
Chapter |
1 |
Keywords |
|
Annotation |
Weil, Quinney begins by arguing, believed literature, in taking the position of the outsider, the outcast, and the tragic, speaks truth. Such truth is challenging and antagonistic and is thus often passed over or ignored. In this, Quinney claims, Weil confuses ‘aesthetic power with cognitive success’, a type of confusion Quinney calls the ‘love of mimesis’. She then goes on to illustrate her point by a lengthy discussion of the debate between Aeschylus and Sophocles. Aeschylus wins the debate, Quinney argues, because of the weightiness of his metaphors, which invoked a sense of impersonal fate. It is precisely this notion that attracted Weil. However, Quinney notes, there is a profound paradox here in that literary representations which are seen by Weil and others to bring the beauty of the world to light, do so by ‘making the sensible world sensible’. In short the beauty of the world is a reflected beauty, found in its image or representation, giving rise to a feeling of mourning or loss for something, inaccessible. Such a view ultimately, Quinney argues, makes life a thing of shadows. |