Mythos & Numinous: Two “Profitable” Things for the Christian from Romantic Poetry

By Sanko Lewis

To confirm my understanding, I asked Pastor Maberly if he wanted me to give a sermon about Romantic poetry. “No, not a sermon,” he said, “a talk. A literary talk.” So this is what I am purposed to do this Sabbath morning: an academic talk on poetry to a Christian audience.

The assumption is that there is something from my discipline—that is literature, poetry in particular, and specifically Romantic poetry—that an audience like yourself may find of value. You may ask if there is actually something you can gain from a talk on poetry? It is probably worth being reminded that large portions of the Holy Scriptures are written in poetic diction. There are the obvious culprits: the book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Apart from these, many other sections of the Bible are also poetic, for instance the very first chapter of the Bible, the Creation account, is a poem—something that may be missed by most readers of Genesis. So obviously an understanding of poetry in general could be useful when approaching the Bible's poetic texts, but is there anything to be gained by consulting extra-biblical poetry? Christians have the Bible and we are told in the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), so that any additional non-canonical material—that is, anything from outside of the Christian Bible—is usually considered obtuse, superficial, redundant and even profane. Secular poetry, unlike the biblical psalms, is not thought of as “given by the inspiration of God,” and one would be tempted to argue therefore not “profitable.” Note, however, that Paul was speaking of Scripture specifically, not of other texts. It is not insensible to consider other texts, like poetic texts, to also be profitable, but, of course, in different ways. Secular poetry is not the Christian's first oracle of choice “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” although some poems do ponder such matters. Rather, the Christian approaches literature as one would approach other sources of instruction where the godly-minded person may perceive glimpses of the Divine, such as nature, philosophy, the sciences, and yes, also the aesthetic arrangement of language chosen for their meaningful, figurative and lyrical qualities. The latter, of course, being a simple definition of poetry.

So what is it that a Christian can learn from poetry? I hope to discuss with you two “profitable” things that we can derive from poetry in general and Romantic poetry in particular: first, a rediscovery of Mythos; and second, a reawakening to the Numinous.

Romanticism

Before I speak on these points I feel it necessary to momentarily digress and first explain what I mean by Romantic poetry as it is possible that some may misunderstand the term. Romantic poems are not poems about romantic feelings as we generally use the word “romantic” today. While Romantic poetry is in a sense quite emotional, those emotions are not limited to feelings of love or lust for a romantic partner. Romantic poetry is generally passionate, but the passion is not by default devoted to a lover; in fact, very few Romantic poems are love poems. Devotion in Romantic poetry are frequently for something other than a loved one; Romantic poetry could be in praise of a daffodil or a rose, a sheep or tiger, a star or the west wind, or virtues like truth and bravery. Romantic poetry refers to the poetry, particularly English poetry, written during the Romanticism, aka Romantic Era, that started in the 1780s and continued well into the 19th century, coinciding with the many revolutions of that period, such as the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolutions in the United States and elsewhere. Romanticism was in a sense also a revolution. It revolted against the obsession with the rationalization and industrialization of that period which considered human beings little more than automatons—robots. Although this was a time of wonderful scientific discovery and industrial progress, it was those in power—the aristocratic state and its supportive religions—that seemed to enjoy true benefit, while the common man continued to suffer greatly; hence the revolutions. (Hence, also, the revolutions we see in our own time.) Percy Bysshe Shelley describes the England of his time as follows:

England, 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,--
A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

The leaders are “dregs,” “leech-like.” The army that should protect liberty destroys it. The Church is “Christless” and “Godless.” (Descriptions quite fitting for our day as well.) People were not merely oppressed physically—“starved and stabbed in the untilled field,” but also mentally; the Romantics would probably say spiritually as well. The poet William Blake described their minds as “manacled.”

The emphasis of the time on rationalization and industrialization praised a stern, mechanical, and overtly rational—i.e. logical—intellectualism focussed on left-brain thinking, which was scornful of the free expression of emotions, inhibitive of passionate feelings and, restrictive of the imagination—i.e. right-brain thinking. Yes, this rational obsessiveness provided wonderful scientific advancement and industrial progress, but these would become the forge that would eventually bring us the destructive power of the great world wars. The science that brought us the engine also brought us the sweatshop, the tank, and eventually the atom bomb. The Romantics revolted with a near prophetic insight. They recognized that the human being cannot be viewed as a mere automaton, a soulless, machinery. They understood that something in our souls die in city and factory. They grasped the importance of nature and her ability to quicken our spirits. They intuited the value of the imagination and its mystical ability to rise us up above our miseries. They appreciated the value the subconscious, of the inner-man, as part of the whole person. They put their hope in some “glorious Phantom” (A rediscovery of man's connection with nature? A new Zeitgeist? A spiritual reawakening? God's divine Spirit?) that would “burst” forth and illuminate the “tempestuous” time that they lived in.

One can talk about Romanticism, but in the end it really needs to be felt to be understood.

Musical Interlude: Chopin's Prelude in E-Minor (Op. 28, No. 4)



It is with this backdrop of the Romanticism, that we will look at the two “profitable” things that I believe the Christian can gain from Romantic Poetry.

1. A Rediscovery of Mythos

The Enlightenment and resultant scientific age did a very good job at dispelling superstitious fiction and replacing it with enlightened scientific fact. That this was a good thing cannot be denied. We know today, for instance, that epilepsy is not caused by demon possession but by abnormal brain wiring or a disturbance in normal neuron activity and we can treat it with appropriate scientific treatments, not with mumbo-jumbo exorcisms. People of old knew nothing about brain wiring and neuron activity so they came up with an explanation, such as demon possession. We could say that they came up with a myth. “Myth,” in this sense, means something that is not scientific; an untruth. The assumption is that any explanation that is not scientific is not true, and therefore a myth; however, this is not necessarily the case. Let me give you an example: “The sun came up this morning.” This statement is true, but it is not scientific. You will all agree with me that the sun did come up this morning, but scientifically that is not true. Rather, the earth rotated around it's axis and our part of the planet became exposed to the sun's rays and as our position to the sun changes as the earth rotates through its 24 hour cycle we notice the sun at different positions relative to us, giving the illusion that the sun is moving across the sky.

There is therefore a type of myth that is scientifically untrue—like the sun coming up—but which is nevertheless true—the sun did come up. Raffaele Pettazzoni, in his article “The Truth of Myth” talks about “true stories” and “false stories.” The sun coming up is a story—a myth—but it is a true myth. The reason we can accept both the earth rotating on its axis and the sun coming up as true accounts of the same event is because, as Pettazzoni puts it, “. . . human thought is mythical and logical at the same time” (107).

The ancient Greeks used two words to describe these two types of knowledge: Mythos and Logos. Logos, of course, is the etymological root for our English word “logic,” referring to rational reasoning. Mythos refers to those “true stories” that Pettazzoni spoke about; stories that reveal truths that although not necessarily scientifically accurate are nevertheless true. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God (2009) explains that in ancient times both Logos and Mythos were thought of as “essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complimentary” (2). She continues to explain that “Logos ('reason') was the pragmatic mode of thought that enable people to function effectively in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality . . . But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggles. For that, people turned to mythos or 'myth'” (3).

In our scientific age Logos have become the only acceptable truth. When something cannot be verified scientifically, it is regarded as an untruth. Myth, in our time is put aside as mere fiction, i.e. fantasy. This resulted in a loss of Mythos – a major resource of truths put aside and unexplored.

Today, when most people read the old myths, they read it from a scientifically indoctrinated paradigm that can tell you much about biology but little about life. All they see is fantasy, but fail to see the Mythos, the truth embedded in the fantasy. For this reason people read the old myths of gods dying and being reborn and think that the Christian story is just another one of these fictional fantasies. Because they could not see the Mythos, neither could they recognise the myth became Logos. In his essay “Truth Became Myth” C. S. Lewis explains it as follows:

Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying God without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified . . . under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. 

The Old Testament Bible as well as some of the pagan mythologies tell similar myths: the Mythos of the “dying God” that through his sacrificial death makes a way of salvation for mankind. In the Old Testament it is typified in the Levitical sacrificial system, in the prophetic words of Isaiah and Daniel, in the poetic language of the Psalms, and so on. When the Mythos became Logos, when the mythical God became a factual person, when Jesus came as the Word incarnate (John 1:14) and lived as a real man at a specific time and place, it was those that rightly recognized the Mythos that could accept him. If you understand “the sun came up this morning” it is easier to recognize “the earth is turning on its axis.” Religion is not “pure rational thinking which knows nothing of myth . . .” says Pettazzoni (107), nor is it pure myth that knows nothing of rational thinking. Mythos and Logos should not be seen as in “conflict but complimentary.” It requires a combination of both to get the whole picture: “To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other is,” explains C. S. Lewis.

Jesus underscored the importance of Mythos during His earthly ministry. Most of Jesus' teaching was in the telling of stories. He taught truths through Mythos. He could tell us the fact—the Logos—that God loves us, but it is the Mythos through the parable of the prodigal son that returns home and is unconditionally received, loved and forgiven by the father, that gives us a true sense of God's love towards us. Logos alone is not enough to understand religious truths.

Poetry can help us rediscover Mythos, for poetry is ultimately a 'mythical' use of language, concerned more with connotative meaning (Mythos) than denotative meaning (Logos).

To the Evening Star – William Blake

Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And then the lion glares through the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover'd with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

One cannot understand this poem from a purely rationalistic paradigm. The speaker is talking to the evening star. Why would anybody want to talk to the planet Venus, the second planet from the Sun, with an atmosphere made up of mostly carbon dioxide and clouds consisting of sulphuric acid? Of course, the speaker is not talking to the planet, but to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet this is not it either: the speaker is evoking the myth of the Grecian goddess of love, but as we have discussed earlier, the myth is merely a story. Embedded in the story is the Mythos—a truth. The speaker is praying not to the planet Venus, nor to the Grecian goddess, but to the Ultimate Reality of Love. Because science fails to describe God and logic comes short, we need a myth, to reveal to us something of the Mythos, the mythical truth, of God. Mythos helps us see the God of Love that “smile upon our evening bed” and protect our loved ones from “wolf” and “lion.” These, of course, being neither just a factual wolf (canis lupus) nor just a factual lion (panthera leo), but whichever frightening and dangerous thing there may be that intends to harm our “flocks.” The poem “To the Evening Star” is a prayer to the God of love to protect our “flocks”—our loved ones, our children, our property—against the “wolfs” and “lions” of this world, particularly during the night time, those times of darkness when we are at our most vulnerable. We can sleep peacefully when we know that God's “influence” is protecting those whom we care for.

2. A Sense of the Numinous

Musical Interlude: Chopin's Funeral March (Final section: 6:56-9:33)



Not only did the obsessive rationalism, the industrial age, science's hijacking of all truth, and city-life deprive us of Mythos, it also took away from us any sense of the numinous.

In his book The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto described the numinous experience as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, “a fearful and fascinating mystery.” A numinous occurrence is a mysterious experience leaving you in fear-and-trembling, but also in awe. When was the last time you stood in fear and trembling before anything? When last did you experienced something of awe: simultaneously awful and awesome? I remember once standing on a pier in Durban, South Africa, hundreds of meters into the ocean. Standing at the edge I looked down at the waves below me, the emerald apexes two-three-four meters above the base of the wave. I was overcome by a feeling, not merely vertigo, but a sense of awe at the fearsome power of the ocean. When you saw the footage of the recent tsunami, what emotions rose in you? Did you also stand amazed and terrified at the unimaginable force that swept away buildings, uprooted trees, flicked over trucks, extinguished lives, all in a seemingly effortless display of power? When you see satellite pictures of hurricanes big enough to cover half of a continent, what feelings are ignited in you? Living in cities few people get a chance to experience the majesty of the night sky and fewer still have ever experienced the mindbogglingly vastness of the heavens, a vastness that makes you realise how infinitely small you are by comparison.

Something that the Romantic poets realized was that the modern era with its scientific explanations that negates all mystery and living so removed from nature, causes one to lose a sense of the numinous. Without a sense of the numinous it is difficult to have a sense of the majesty of God, which is greater still than the oceans and the heavens. To the Romantic poets, mystery is a key element to being truly human. For this reason they put emphasis on the creative act, on the subconscious, on dreams, on the imagination, even on death: the mysterious things. But it is in nature where they feel that special ingredient—where the mysterious seem to touch the soul, where the numinous can be felt.

William Blake's poem “The Tyger” is considered one of the most anthologised poems in English. I think part of what makes it so popular is that it gives a sense of the numinous:

The Tyger – William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The speaker describes a tiger—a ferocious magnificent beast. The black stripes on its orange hide creates the image of tongues of fire, making the animal seem to be burning. It's eyes glows like coals. It's muscles and sinews seem to be forged from steal. An adult tiger can weigh 300 kg (660 pounds), be three meters in length (around 11ft), with canines of about 10 centimetres (four inches) long. They can reach a speed of over 60 km per hour (nearly 40 miles an hour) and can jump horizontally nearly 10 meters. Imagine you find yourself sitting right next to this ferocious predator while it is asleep. It may wake up at any second and find you there within striking distance of its giant, scalpel-sharp claws. A strike with a tiger's paw is strong enough to fracture your skull or break your back. Dread, fantastic dread, is the emotion that comes to mind. The tiger is at once mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans—mysteriously fearful and fascinating. But even greater than the tiger, is the Creator of the tiger, the mythical blacksmith in the poem that forged the tiger, using mythical blacksmith's tools, a “hammer,” an “anvil,” a “furnace,” with which to make the fearsome predator. The blacksmith retrieved the fire from which the tiger's eyes are made from some mythical far-off place, “distant deeps or skies.” The blacksmith twisted the sinews of the tiger's heart like one would twist wires; he moulded the tiger's brain in a furnace. And when the ferocious beast began to live, when its “heart began to beat,” the blacksmith feared it not. The poem introduces us to a being even more fearful than the tiger. In this poem we are confronted with the numinous.

...ooOoo...

We live in a time of “myth busting.” The skies are so polluted that stars cannot inspire us. These days it sadly requires tragic natural disasters to instil in us a sense of the numinous. The poets, particularly the Romantic poets, reminds us of both Mythos and the numinous. From Mythos we learn truth that science cannot articulate. C. S. Lewis was of the opinion that “men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed.” From the numinous we are reminded of that which is wholly other and greater than us. We are reminded of how awfully awesome God is.

Like the accomplished photographer that helps us see better the beauty or tragedy that is all around us, poetry's purpose is to remind us to look at the world with a reawakened sense of the great themes of life. I finish my talk with the hope that you feel inspired to rediscover both the mythical and the numinous. While the Romantic poets are concerned with both, they are not the only place—or maybe not even the best place—to be exposed to either Mythos or the numinous. If we were to ask the Romantic poets where to find Mythos or the numinous, I think they would tell us to get out of the cities and into nature. Good advice. And Shelley would probably admonish us that our religion should not be “Christless, Godless,” and with “a book sealed,” so let us search for the mythical-factual Christ, for the Numinous God and let us open the Book. We return to the Scriptures “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” but we can also find in the Scriptures great examples of both Mythos and the numinous. Read the poetic books and the prophecies for Mythos, the Torah or the final chapters of the book of Job for a sense of the numinous and go to the Gospels to see their culmination. In the life, death and resurrection of Christ we see Mythos become Logos, myth become fact. Before the empty tomb we are confronted with a mythical, numinous, nevertheless factual Being that is killed, yet conquers death and lives again, and whom invites us to share in His triumph.

Amen

Changing Educational Paradigms -- Sir Ken Robinson

c

From Walt

WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS
INTER-OFFICE COMMUNICATION

DATE DECEMBER 23, 1935
TO DON GRAHAM
FROM WALT

Right after the holidays, I want to get together with you and work out a very systematic training course for young animators, and also outline a plan of approach for our older animators.

Some of our established animators at the present time are lacking in many things, and I think we should arrange a series of courses to enable these men to learn and acquire the things they lack.

Naturally the first most important thing for any animator to know is how to draw. Therefore it will be necessary that we have a good life drawing class. But you must remember Don, that while there are many men who make a good showing in the drawing class, and who, from your angle, seem good prospects - these very men lack in some other phase of the business that is very essential to their success as animators.

I have found that men respond much more readily to classes dealing with practical problems than to more theoretic treatment. Therefore I think it would be a very good idea to appeal to these men by conducting these classes with the practical approach in mind. In other words, try to show in these classes that the men can make immediate practical application of what they are being taught.

The talks given by Fergy, Fred Moore, Ham Luske, and Fred Spencer, have been enthusiastically received by all those in attendance. Immediately following these talks, I have noticed a great change in animation. Some men have made close to 100% improvement in the handling and timing of their work. This strikes me as pointing a way toward the proper method of teaching in the future.

The following occurs to me as a method of procedure:

Take the most recent pictures - minutely analyze all the business, action, and results, using the better pieces of animation as examples going thru the picture with these questions in mind:

1. What was the idea to be presented?
2. How was the idea presented?
3. What result was achieved?
4. After seeing this result - what could have been done to the picture from this point on, to improve it?

Encourage discussion on the part of the men present; if possible, have some of the animators over to talk to them about the problems they were confronted with in the picture, and what the animator himself would do if he had the chance to do the animation over.

I believe these classes could be combined for presentation to all the animators, young and old as well.

It wouldn’t be bad if you made up a list of the qualifications of an animator in order of importance. Then all these men could see what it takes to be an animator, and could check on themselves to see how nearly they approach the desired perfection.

The list should start with the animators ability to draw; then, ability to visualize action, breaking it down into drawings and analyze the movement the mechanics of the action. From this point, we would come to his ability to caricature action - to take a natural human action and see the exaggerated funny side of it - to anticipate the effect or illusion created in the mind of the person viewing that action. It is important also for the animator to be able to study sensation and to feel the force behind sensation, in order to project that sensation. Along with this, the animator should know what creates laughter - why do things appeal to people as being funny.

In other words, a good animator combines all these qualities:

Good draughtsmanship
Knowledge of caricature, of action as well as features.
Knowledge and appreciation of acting
Ability to think up gags and put over gags
Knowledge of story construction and audience values
Knowledge and understanding of all the mechanical and detailed routine involved in his work, in order that he may be able to apply his other abilities without becoming tied up in a knot by lack of technique along these lines.

This is all very rough - just a jumble of thoughts - but what I plan is that we get together after the holidays, as suggested above, and really get these plans worked out in detail. Then we should strive to see that all the men whom we are drilling for animators, are given the chance to develop along the lines outlined.

I am convinced that there is a scientific approach to this business, and I think we shouldn’t give up until we have found out all we can about how to teach these young fellows the business.

The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen - but to give a caricature of life and action - to picture on the screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to life dream fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives. Also to caricature things of life as it is today - or make fantasies of things we think of today.

The point must be made clear to the men that our study of the actual is not so that we may be able to accomplish the actual, but so that we may have a basis upon which to go into the fantastic, the unreal, the imaginative - and yet to let it have a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity and contact with the public.

A good many of the men misinterpret the idea of studying the actual motion. They think it is our purpose merely to duplicate these things. This misconception should be cleared up for all. I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real. This point should be brought out very clearly to all new men, and even the older men.

Comedy, to be appreciated, must have contact with the audience. This we all know, but sometimes forget. By contact, I mean that there must be a familiar, sub-conscious association. Somewhere, or at some time, the audience has felt, or met with, or seen, or dreamt, the situation pictured. A study of the best gags and audience reaction we have had, will prove that the action or situation is something based on an imaginative experience or a direct life connection. This is what I mean by contact with the audience. When the action or the business loses its contact, it becomes silly and meaningless to the audience.

Therefore, the true interpretation of caricature is the exaggeration of an illusion of the actual; or the sensation of the actual put into action. In our animation we must not only show the actions or reactions of a character, we must picture also with the action the feelings of those characters. My experience has shown me that the most hilarious of comedies is always based on things actual, possible, or probable. That idea, behind the things I just mentioned above, can be incorporated in every stage of instruction - from the life drawing clear on thru to the planning and staging of the work.

I have often wondered why, in your life drawing class, you don’t have your men look at the model and draw a caricature of the model, rather than an actual sketch. But instruct them to draw the caricature in good form, basing it on the actual model. I noticed a little caricature of one of the models in the life class made by Ward Kimball, and it struck me that there was an approach to the work that we should give consideration. I don’t see why using this method, you can’t give the class all the fundamentals of drawing the need and still combine the work with the development of a sense of caricature.

Would it be a good idea to take a man like Joe Grant and see what could be worked out with him along the lines of giving a talk some night on an approach to caricature, a Harpo caricature - what he sees and what he thinks about when he is trying to make a caricature. It might be advisable to have a talk with Joe on this.

I started out early last fall to work out some sort of system with you for teaching elementary phases of animation in a systematic way. My thought at that time was not to go too straight. That’s why I wanted to get somebody to demonstrate various walks in a comic way.

I still think this is a very good idea, and constitutes a far better approach for the younger men than giving them too many straight natural things that direct their minds to the unimaginative end of the business. It is possible that with the comedy, you can still teach them the fundamentals of all these actions.

Take for example, the walk. Why can’t you teach the fundamentals of a straight walk yet combine it with some person that is giving an exaggeration or a comic interpretation of a straight walk. Perhaps for very elementary instruction, it might be best to present straight action; but not to keep giving them straight action as they progress and gain a little experience... Start them going into the comedy angle or caricature angle of the action. For example - a fat person, with a big pot belly: What comedy illusion does he give you?

You could at the same time instruct the classes regarding the reason why he has to move a certain way (because of his weight, etc.) Present the walk soliciting discussion on:

What illusion does that person, fat with pot-belly, give you as you see him?
What do you think of as you see him walking along?
Does he look like a bowl of jelly?
Does he look like an inflated balloon with arms and legs dangling?
Does he look like a roly-poly?

In other words, analyze the fat person's walk and the reasons for his walking that way.... BUT DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU’VE HAD THE GROUP BRING OUT ALL THE COMEDY THAT CAN BE EXPRESSED WITH THAT FAT PERSON’S WALK; also all the character - but drive for the comedy side of the character.

Take a skinny person - somebody that’s loose jointed, angular, shoulder blades showing - what does he suggest? Does he look hung together with wires like a walking skeleton? Does he look like a marionette flopping around? Does he look like a scarecrow blowing in the wind? What illusion is created by the walk, by the movement, of that skinny loose-jointed person?

In discussing a short person, with short legs - he would naturally have quick movements - seems to move very fast - would have to take twice as many steps as a taller person, thus making him look as if he were going at a greater speed. What illusion do you get from a person like that? Does he strike you as a little toy wound up and running around on wheels? Does he look like a little Pekinese pup? A dwarf? or midget?

There are a number of things that could be brought up in these discussions to stir the imagination of the men, so that when they get into actual animation, they’re not just technicians, but they’re actually creative people.

In the study of other problems, is it possible to bring out more the exaggeration of form and action - as in the study of the balance of the body? Can we bring that out even to an exaggerated point? It will probably make it stronger to them - make them realize more the necessity of that balance of the body - and yet point out how they can utilize that to strengthen their business when they get into animation, as in bending. In someone bending over - can we show the exaggeration in that action by showing how the pants pull up in back to an exaggerated degree that becomes comical? Can we show how the coat stretches across the back, and the
sleeves pull up and the arms seem to shoot out as from a turtle-neck as they shoot out of the sleeves? What can we do to bring these points out stronger to the men?

In lifting, for example - or other actions - we should drive at the fundamentals of the animation, and at the same time, incorporate the caricature. When someone is lifting a heavy weight, what do you feel? Do you feel that something is liable to crack any minute and drop down? Do you feel that because of the pressure he’s got, he’s going to blow up, that his face is going to turn purple, that his eyes are going to bulge out of their sockets, that the tension in the arm is so terrific that he’s going to snap? What sensations do you get from someone rising - different ways of rising? Sitting? When somebody is sitting - when he sits down and relaxes, does it look as if all the wind goes out of him? Does he look like a loose bag of nothing? Also, in pushing... in the extremeness of a push, the line shoots right down from the fingertips clear down to the heel. In pulling - show the stretch, and all that. Bring out the caricature of those various actions, at the same time driving at the fundamentals of them - the actual.

The various expressions in the body are important. The animators go thru animation and don’t make the positions of the body - hold positions and relaxed positions - express anything. They try to do all the expression with the parts that are moving, whereas the body should enter into it. Without the body entering into the animation, the other things are lost immediately. Examples - an arm hung on to a body it doesn’t belong to, or an arm working and thinking all by itself. I think something could be worked out to develop this point, even if you got a person up behind a screen, a model perhaps, and threw a light on them. Have the class do nothing but watch the silhouette as the model goes thru different poses, noting how the body enters into the expression of an action. Or we could photograph the action to show to the men. The study of this would be a big help toward making the men realize the value of getting the story and the business over in the rough drawings that is the action itself, rather than depending on little trimmings, on the clothes, facial expressions, and things like that to put over the business.

If the animators get the groundwork right, that is, the action underneath all these trimmings right - then what they add is going to be twice as effective. It’s a very important point that we must impress on the new men and the older men.

After we have given the men all the suggestions we can that have to do with expressing ideas through the body, then we can come down to the value of the facial expression - the use of the eyes, eyebrows, the mouth - their relation to one another - how the eyes and the mouth have to work together sometimes for expression - how they may work independently for expression at other times. In other words, then we would go into the combined use of expressive features and expressive actions of the body. Then it would be good to take one away from the other, and see which is the most important.

We should have courses in staging and planning. These courses can be given by some of our more successful animators.

Also we should try to show how to analyze a scene or piece of business before starting to work on it. We should try to show the men ways of visualizing action in their minds, breaking the action so that the men are prepared in advance to begin animation of the action and know thoroughly what they are going to animate. So many of the men start in now and have no idea what they’re going to do when they start the scene. They know what they’re supposed to do, but they can’t break it down in a systematic way that will enable them to go knowingly ahead.

Many men do not realize what really makes things move - why they move - what the force behind the movement is. I think a course along that line, accompanied by practical examples of analysis and planning, would be very good. In other words, in most instances, the driving force behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character - or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them. We also do things on the spur of the moment by reaction to stimuli that are telegraphed to the mind by the nerves, etc. There are also things carried out by the subconscious mind - reflexes, actions that have become habit through repetition, instincts. In other words, the subconscious mind is an assistant often times in carrying out things that may or may not have been taught, Examples of that are sleeping, lighting a cigarette and throwing a match away without any thought, whistling, walking, running, sitting, etc. It’s not necessary to think of those actions.

But certain actions we do think about - certain actions we deliberately plan. We plan them very quickly in our mind. The point to bring out here is that when a character knows what he’s going to do, he doesn’t have to stop before each individual action and think to do it. He has planned in advance in his mind. For example - say the mind thinks, "I’ll close the door - lock it - then I’m going to undress, and go to bed." Well, you walk over to the door - before the walk is finished, you’re reaching for the door ... before the door is closed, you reach for the key ... before the door is locked, you’re turning away - while you’re walking away, you’re undoing your tie - and before you reach the bureau, you have your tie off. In other words, before you know it, you’re undressed - and you’ve done it with one thought, "I’m going to go to bed."

A lot of valuable points could be brought out to the men in showing them that it is not necessary for them to take a character to one point, complete that action completely, and then turn to the following action as if he had never given it a thought until after completing the first action. Anticipation of action is important.

This enters into animation in many ways and we have many serious difficulties coming up because of the men’s inability to visualize things in the proper way.

I think a good study of music would be indispensable to the animator - a realization on their part of how primitive music is, how natural it is for people to want to go to music - a study of rhythm, the dance - the various rhythms that enter into our lives every day - how rhythmical the body really is - and how well balanced the body really is. That, in itself, is music. In other words, it could be music in the body. We dance - we can keep time to rhythm without ever being taught - a baby does it - cannibals do it. But fancy dancing or any trick stuff, we have to learn. There are things in life that we do to rhythm that come natural to us. Notice how rhythmic an action like pounding with a hammer is! There’s a reason for that. You must have that rhythm or you can’t carry out that action completely. Also, sawing a board. See how necessary it is to have a good rhythm for that. Also, walking ... if you walked without rhythm, where would you get? You’d have to be thinking all the time what to do next. You’d have to set your mind to walking rhythmically, instead of doing it naturally.

Naturally the body is very well balanced. When one hand dose something, the other serves as a balance to it. There are various things that combine balance in the body - subconscious balance ... and yet the animators do not know it. They will do something with one hand - they don’t know what to do with the other, so they will do something entirely contrary to what that hand should be doing, because they don’t understand the basic concept of balance. This idea of balance of the body ties in with the idea of expression of the body. If there is balance, it adds expression to the things that the body is doing. If you don’t have that balance of the body, then your expressions are wrong, insincere, unconvincing. Those concepts also tie in with overlapping action.

In other words, we could work out all these basic concepts in such a way as to show them all related, interdependent, and have to do with each other, and we could tie them together in various ways, showing different combinations of their application. We will thus stir up the men’s minds more, and they will begin to think of a lot of these things that would never occur to them otherwise if the way weren’t pointed out to them.

I’d like also to have a study of dialog. I want to prepare a course on dialog - phrasing and rhythm of dialog, moods and character of dialog, expressions, gestures, directness, use of the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, head, arms, body, tongue, inhalation and exhalation, and various other aspects that have to do with the successful picturization of dialog in the cartoon. Let’s see if we can’t organize something like this and get it going right after the first of the year.

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4 c.
12-23-35

Source: Letters of Note

Language -- Stephen Fry

Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale

An article by Adrian Hon, originally published in Telegraph.co.uk

If book publishers want to see the next decade in any reasonable health, then it’s absolutely imperative that they rethink their pricing strategies and business models right now. I hope this example will illustrate why:

I’m a big fan of Iain Banks’ novels; I always buy them in hardback as soon as they come out. It doesn’t matter what reviewers say, I need to have his books immediately. His latest novel, Surface Detail, came out a few days ago and promptly arrived at my office – all 627 pages of it. I lugged the thing home and began reading it this morning.

Being a Culture novel, it’s a real page-turner and I found it difficult to pull myself away from it. I didn’t want to lug it back to the office again, not least because I didn’t have any space left in my bag, so I did the unthinkable – I googled surface detail ePub so I could download and read it on my iPad (and iPhone).

I try doing this every six months or so, and I usually end up mired in a swamp of fake torrent links and horrible PDF versions; for what it’s worth, this was mostly out of curiosity, since six months ago I didn’t own an iPad.

This time, it took me 60 seconds to download a pristine ePub file, and another five minutes to move it to my iPad and iPhone. While this was going on, I took the opportunity to poke around the torrent sites and forums that my search had yielded, and discovered a wonderful selection of books, including:

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carre

Jump! by Jilly Cooper

The Fry Chronicles, by Stephen Fry

Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Solar, by Ian McEwan

Zero History, by William Gibson

Obama’s Wars, by Bob Woodward

Now, that’s not all of the current bestsellers, but it’s not a bad start. “Oh, but we’ve still got the backlist!” I hear some publisher cry. No such luck, because some helpful pirate has bundled entire collections of popular backlist novels into a single torrents, including:

Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels

Lord of the Rings

Narnia

Harry Potter

Artemis Fowl

Twilight

The Hunger Games

Every Ken Follett book

Every Stieg Larsson book

Every Stephen King book

Every Douglas Adams book

etc.

Pretty much all of these books are available in ePub, mobi, PDF and every other popular format (the non-fiction and literary selection is much worse though, which probably reflects the tastes of the people uploading the torrents – that’ll change soon enough).

I am not a torrent-finding genius – I just know how to add ‘ePub’ to the name of a book or author. I don’t need a fast internet connection, because most books are below 1MB in size, even in a bundle of multiple formats. I don’t need to learn how to use Bittorrent, because I already use that for TV shows. And Apple has made it very easy for me to add ePub files to my iPad and iPhone. So really, there is nothing stopping me from downloading several hundred books other than the fact that I already have too much to read and I think authors should be paid.

But why would the average person not pirate eBooks? Like Cory Doctorow says, it’s not going to become any harder to type in ‘Toy Story 3 bittorrent’ in the future – and ‘Twilight ePub’ is even easier to type, and much faster to download to boot.

After Christmas, tens of millions of people will have the motive, the means, and the opportunity to perform book piracy on a massive scale. It won’t happen immediately, but it will happen. It’ll begin with people downloading electronic copies of books they already own, just for convenience’s sake (and hey, the New York Times says it’s ethical!). This will of course handily introduce them to the world of ebook torrents.

Next, you’ll have people downloading classics – they’ll say to themselves, “Tolkein and C. S. Lewis are both dead, so why should I feel bad about pirating their books?” Then you’ll have people downloading ebooks not available in their country yet. Then it’ll be people downloading entire collections, just because it’s quicker. Then they’ll start wondering why they should buy any ebooks at all, when they cost so much. And then you go bust.

(In case you think this is just a scary story, think again – a conservative estimate this month suggests there are 1.5-3 million people looking for pirated eBooks every day [nb: this is a link to a PDF]. A suggestion: If you gave away a free eBook copy with physical books, that might help things. A bit.)

But of course I’m exaggerating. Most publishers won’t go bust. eBook prices will be forced down, margins will be cut, consolidation will occur. New publishers will spring up, with lower overheads and offering authors a bigger cut. A few publishers will thrive; most publishers will suffer. Some new entrants will make a ton of cash; maybe there’ll be a Spotify or Netflix for books. Life will go on. Authors will continue writing – it’s not as if they ever did it for the money – and books will continue being published.

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post called The Death of Publishers. Back then, most commenters didn’t believe that eBook readers would ever rival physical books for convenience and comfort. They didn’t think that it would ever be that easy to pirate books. The post caused a splash at the time, but it didn’t change anything.

Here’s an excerpt:

Book publishers have had a longer grace period than the other entertainment industries. Computers and iPods had an easy time besting DVDs and CDs, but it’s been difficult to make something that can compete with a book. It may be strange to hear, but a book is a fantastic piece of technology. It’s portable, it doesn’t need batteries, it’s cheap to print and easy to read. This has led many publishers to complacency, thinking there’s something special about books that will spare them from the digital revolution. They’ve seen so many poor or substandard eBook readers that they think it’ll never be done properly.

They’re wrong. eBook readers are about to get very good, very quickly. A full colour wireless eBook reader with a battery life of over a week, a storage capacity of a thousand books, and a flexible display will be yours for $150 in ten years time. If this sounds unbelievable, consider this – the first iPod was released only six years ago and cost $400. Imagine what an iPod will look like in four years time.

How wrong I was! It’s only taken us three years to get the Kindle 3 at a mere $189, with a battery life of a month and a storage capacity of 3500 books. Sure, it doesn’t have colour or a flexible display, but it does have global wifi and 3G, and it’s a lot lighter than I thought it might be. Give it another year or two and we’ll have that colour as well.

(I was also wrong about scanning and OCRing being the main way of pirating books – turns out it was people cracking the DRM of eBooks that publishers had helpfully formatted and distributed themselves!)

But I was right about the complacency of publishers. They’ve spent three years bickering about eBook prices and Amazon and Apple and Andrew Wylie, and they’ve ignored that massive growling wolf at the door, the wolf that has transformed the music and TV so much that they’re forced to give their content away for practically nothing.

Time’s up. The wolf is here.

Kurt Vonnegut: How to Write a Short Story

Kurt Vonnegut: How to Get a Job Like Mine