I shouldn't really presume to answer for Eric, but I'm intrigued that
your answer takes the form of defending Salieri against the 'bad' label.
I don't think Eric was speaking of their music or their personalities
(and from this distance what else is there to like or not?). There's
just something about the light of Mozart that dragged in its wake, the
darkness of Salieri. Perhaps it has to do with balance. Perhaps with
the nature of opposites. Or perhaps merely with our perception -- our
very human will to see (or even impose) organization. We don't like it
when the other shoe doesn't drop.
As for Mozart himself, he seems to have carried his own darkness with
him as well. And Salieri surely carried his own light. Perhaps the
world is like a huge fractal and this 'doubleness' is just it's signature.
Ursula, seeing double in North Bay
Michael Chase wrote:
Le 25 juin 05, à 13:03, Eric Yost a écrit :
"God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)
Cain slew Abel and Seth knew not why For if the children of Israel were supposed to multiply Then why must any of the children die?
_____
Philo Judaeus, the great Alexandrian syncretist, wrote a fine piece on this called, if I remember correctly, "Why the Bad Must Always Attack the Good."
Cain gives God a poor offering and Abel doesn't so Cain must attack him. Archimedes doesn't want to stop thinking about geometry so the drunken Roman soldier kills him. Mozart activates Salieri.
The universe seems configured so that if you create something beautiful, something arises to disfigure it. If you create a beautiful garden with a fountain and rose arbors, some cretin has to buy a parcel of land next to it and use it to store rusting car bodies.
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Yes, but why? Precisely because it was a paradise. The existence of the paradise pulled the parking lot into existence.
Anyone else notice this phenomena at work in the universe?
M.C. Not really. For without wanting to plunge into the fetid miasmas of Relativism, I must admit that I often have a pretty hard time telling the distance between the good and the bad. Mozart good, Salieri bad : really? I kind of like Salieri, actually.
Might good and bad be - to *some* extent at any rate - a matter of perspective?
Best, Mike
Michael Chase (goya@xxxxxxxxxxx) CNRS UPR 76 7, rue Guy Moquet Villejuif 94801 France
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