Class Notes 1/13

Notes: First Day of Class

Highbrow, less people reading it, Lowbrow, more people reading it.

We are even looking at movies because we read movies more than we read books. But there are Highbrow movies that nobody watches.

There are 5 major themes of the class:

1. The Myth of the Eternal Return

2. The 20 minute Lifetime

3. Life as Fiction and Language

4. The World as Myth and Dream

5. Dolce Domum (To Arrive Where We Started)

Inventories & Lists

Attention given to seemingly endless lists.

We have to address our sense of attention.
I used to zone out on the first day for the class roll, but the list is poetry itself as I've learned from my Nabokov class last semester. Something so mundane with seemingly useless and uninteresting objects or names listed is interesting and poetic. Next time you find an old shopping list wadded up in your coat pocket or in the bottom of your purse, read it again with some more attention. I'm reading Wind in the Willows for the Capstone class, but I happened upon a list listing the contents of a wicker luncheon-basket in the beginning on pages 6 and 7 that I would like to share,

"coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscressandwidgesspottedmeatgingerbearlemonadesodawater-"

The Book of Lists was mentioned by Dr. Sexson, and I think I have The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay by Umberto Eco.

Bookmarks Magazine gives a description: "Best-selling author and philosopher Umberto Eco is currently resident at the Louvre, and his chosen theme of study is \"the vertigo of lists.\" Reflecting on this enormous trove of human achievements, in his lyrical intellectual style he has embarked on an investigation of the phenomenon of cataloging and collecting. This book, featuring lavish reproductions of artworks from the Louvre and other world-famous collections, is a philosophical and artistic sequel to Eco’s recent acclaimed books, History of Beauty and On Ugliness, books in which he delved into the psychology, philosophy, history, and art of human forms. Eco is a modern-day Diderot, and here he examines the Western mind’s predilection for list-making and the encyclopedic. His central thesis is that in Western culture a passion for accumulation is recurring: lists of saints, catalogues of plants, collections of art. This impulse has recurred through the ages from music to literature to art. Eco refers to this obsession itself as a \"giddiness of lists\" but shows how in the right hands it can be a \"poetics of catalogues.\" From medieval reliquaries to Andy Warhol’s compulsive collecting, Umberto Eco reflects in his inimitably inspiring way on how such catalogues mirror the spirit of their times."