[Wittrs] Duncan Richter: Midnight in Paris
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- To: language goes on holiday <wittrsfeed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "wittrs2feed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <wittrs2feed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:25:50 -0700 (PDT)
language goes on holiday
language goes on holiday
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Midnight in Paris
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:44 AM PDT
A few nights ago I saw Woody Allen's latest movie, which is lightweight but
fun, and features lots of very appealing views of Paris. While I was watching
it some thoughts I've been having lately seemed to come together, so let's see
if I can connect the dots now, in the light of day.
Larkin said once that there are two types of poetry: the kind that tries to say
something new, and the kind that tries to say something old in a new way. (He
aimed for the latter.) It seems to me that all speech/writing/thought is like
this. If you aren't saying something (that at least seems to you to be) new or
putting an old idea in a new way then you aren't really saying anything at all.
You are parroting others, being a mouthpiece for them.
Larkin's preference for new ways of putting old ideas is somewhat like
Wittgenstein's ideas that more facts won't solve the big questions of life and
that living longer (even forever) won't help make life meaningful either. What
you need (if anything) is a new way to think of the facts or to talk about
life, a new way to see or conceive of things. I think he takes it as given that
it must be possible to live a meaningful life at all times, so, while culture
or civilization might make a big difference to how you live, when you live is
irrelevant to whether it's possible for you to live a good life. It always is
possible. (And it's always possible to fail, too: nothing, like something,
happens anywhere, as Larkin says.) But it takes imagination or a special kind
of gift to express yourself in the right way. Which I think connects with this:
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: Philosophy ought
really to be written only as poetic composition. It must, as it seems to me, be
possible to gather from this how far my thinking belongs to the present, future
or past. For I was thereby revealing myself as someone who cannot do what he
would like to be able to do.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright (in collaboration
with Heikki Nyman), trans. Peter Winch, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1980, p.
24e.)Midnight in Paris is about a man who cannot do what he would like to able
to do, because he feels that he belongs to a different time and place (Paris in
the 1920s). But then he finds a way to do it, so all ends well. It's not very
deep (with possibly one exception, every character is two-dimensional), but
it's optimistic and it looks nice.
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