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PILLAR_OF_LEAR

                                      May 31 2004 


About ANNA_KARENINA:   
   
So that he can focus solely on the      
music at the concert, Levin very  
carefully isolates himself from         
irrelevant distractions; he stands
behind a pillar, and closes his eyes: 
                        
    But the longer he listened to the _King Lear_
    fantasia, the further he felt from the
    possibility of forming any definite opinion.
    The musical expression of some emotion seemed
    perpetually on the point of beginning, when it
    suddenly broke into fragments of the
    expression of other emotions or even into
    unrelated sounds which, elaborate though they
    were, were only connected by the whim of the
    composer.  Even these fragments of musical
    expression, though some of them were good,
    were unpleasing because they were quite
    unexpected and unprepared for. Mirth, sadness,
    despair, tenderness, triumph, came forth
    without any cause, like the thoughts of a
    madman.  And, as in the mind of a madman,
    these emotions vanished just as unexpectedly.
                                                      
                    -- part VII, Ch V, p619           
                 
         Afterward Levin talks to someone       
         that liked this music, because he 
         was thinking in terms of the "King    
         Lear" concept:  He had read the         
         additional information in the            
         program about the dramatic actions      
         the music was supposed to represent.    
         
                               

             So possibly:
                         
                   The music is bad music,
                   because it does not    
                   stand on it's own.     
                                          
                        or                
                                          
                   The music, like all art,
                   needs to be taken in context.                   
                   

     Levin was suffering from a kind of   
     tunnel vision, the kind of thing a   
     methodical, disciplined, well-meaning
     person like himself is prone to...   

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