[lit-ideas] The Importance of Being Dorian (Was: His 'Dress (of Thought)')
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:43:51 EDT
Geary quotes from that beautiful poem by W. Stevens,
>>The dress of a woman of Lhasa,
>>In its place,
>>Is an invisible element of that place
>>Made visible."
and considers:
>I wonder how the dress of our language
>is an invisible determinate
>of who we are.
-- Interesting, the usual quote is "Language is the dress of thought":
Pope, Expression is the dress of thought
Wesley, Style is the dress of thought
-- both in the Oxford Dict. of Quotations
Cf. OED for 'dress', fig. "the outward form under which anything is
presented."
1661 BOYLE Style of Script. (1675) 164 Eloquence, the dress of our thoughts.
1713
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-d.html#derham)
1797 Monthly Mag. III. 147 L'Histoire secrette de la Revolution, which
work will speedily appear in an English dress.
Being basically Dorian in training, I found that always a bit redundant,
since the Dorians were notably _nudists_.
Judy Evans has commented on 'gymnastiast' (in the OED) as synonym for G.
Stein, of 'public-shool boy'.
We can grant that, by allowing that if only for the _weather_ no German or
English Gymnasium could compare to the Dorian ones in the Pelopponese. The dry
weather, the sunny skies, the warmth of it all, makes _gymnasia_ (from Greek
_gymnos_, nude) practically the _only_ way to exercise (or train as Geary
prefers) your body (and soul).
I see that 'dress' derives from L. type **rectire, f. rect-us, directare,
directus.
I wonder if it's a Dorian thing that nowadays, if you say, "I bought a nice
dress at Bloomingdale's" the implicature is that a _female_ silky gruebleen
thing.
This reminds me of Gibson, the British sculptor, who _refused_ to sculpt
anything but the naked human form. "The mere idea of a drape' is absurd and
against God's idea of beauty and grace". I suppose that Sister Wendy could not
but agree, even though she may favour training bras for some of her youngest
tuttees.
Why is it that only the earliest Greek sculptures of MALES (kuroi) are
_naked_ while the contemporary to them earliest Greek sculptures of FEMALES
(kurai) are _dressed_? Why is it that there is nothing like Polykleitos's Kanon
(Doruphoros) or Leusyppus's Apoxymenos -- so carefully study for the female
form? (The Venus of Milo is _hellenistic_ never Classic).
Some doubts of a Sartor Resartus
Cheers,
JL
************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] The Importance of Being Dorian (Was: His 'Dress (of Thought)')
