Saturday, April 09, 2005

The ghostly watermark left by the objective conditions of the age

On the interpretation of the art of the past:

“A structure is reconstructed which we translate into contemporary terms, leaving behind a period narrative which we can no longer stomach and must be repressed or ignored, if the older text is to be revived without too much guilt or intellectual recrimination. Thus the reconstructed part of a Beethoven sonata is tacitly separated from the cloying period melody that comes to stand for Viennese enlightenment frivolity, class guilt, luxury, the self-indulgence of culture at its most gratuitous and intolerable.”

No, the cloying period melody and all the other drek has to be translated too.