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Re: [xmca] beautiful and amazing evolution: Birds of paradise

Post script: My use of the term "civilized" must certainly be read in a somehow ironic manner. What I intended to say is that Litost as depicted in Kundera's text looks like a culturally mediated emotion and strikes me as quite a "petit bourgeois" emotional response. Shame and revenge as a way to establish culturally mediated dominance. Neruda's character on the other hand has only the shame part of it and a lot of self conscious resentful solitude. Alas! Poor poets!  Always mediating their crude emotions with written words. Hard to imagine how those feelings could be part of life in the preliterate infinite Amazon rain forest, but maybe my imagination is just too limited.

On Apr 9, 2013, at 12:39 AM, David Preiss wrote:

> Other version of Walking Around in here:
> 
> http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.htm#_Toc12957968
> 
> The best one is by John Felstiner. If you google it it will show up.
> 
> David
> 
> On Apr 9, 2013, at 12:24 AM, David Preiss wrote:
> 
>> Hi Mike,
>> 
>> That video reminded me of the following one on "uncontacted tribes" because both made me felt we were looking at some very primary phylogenetic experiences:
>> 
>> http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/uncontactedtribes
>> 
>> PLEASE WATCH IT. There is so much beauty on this planet and we scarcely can grasp and experience a minimum of it without damaging it. I wonder how much will be left for our daughters and their daughters. 
>> 
>> The video on uncontacted tribes is full of potential Vygotskian implications but I must confess that after watching the video a part of me wished those "tribes" be never contacted. (The same I felt after looking at those amazing birds).
>> 
>> Would this poem fit the experience of Litost? It sounds like a very civilized form of human misery:
>> 
>> http://allpoetry.com/poem/8496965-Walking_Around__Original_Spanish_-by-Pablo_Neruda
>> 
>> Although Neruda's misery is apparently less social, I wonder whether those uncontacted tribes experience something like it.
>> 
>> Mysterious that you mention Neruda today: his body was just unburied to check whether he was poisoned and killed by the dictatorship.
>> 
>> David
>> 
>> On Apr 8, 2013, at 11:00 PM, mike cole wrote:
>> 
>>> Everyone is so busy, its hard to stop and allow oneself to be transported that way, David. Glad it connected for you.
>>> 
>>> No one commented on the fragment from Kundera on Litost that I posted. I believe it is a kind of empirical verification of the kinds of claims that Manfred was making about cultural emotions. There must be some good examples from Neruda.
>>> 
>>> I think it would help the discussion a lot, given our international, polyglot cultural second natures, if people could post accessible, compelling examples of the theoretical ideas they are promulgating in legible
>>> terms.
>>> mike
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 8:57 PM, David Preiss <daviddpreiss@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Thanks for sharing this, Mike.
>>> Evolution and beauty as a joint act. Wow!
>>> David
>>> 
>>> On Apr 7, 2013, at 9:16 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>> 
>>> > This brief film is really worth checking out on aesthetic and more narrowly
>>> > professional lines.
>>> > mike
>>> >
>>> > http://www.youtube.com/embed/REP4S0uqEOc
>>> > __________________________________________
>>> > _____
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>>> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 

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