BarkellWH -> RE: early history of rondeñas (Mar. 25 2015 13:18:33)
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quote:
There is a wonderful quote by Ortega y Gasset that says: "In the great hour of the decline of the genre...the opportunity of achieving the perfect work is excellent...when accumulated experience has utterly refined the artistic sensitivity." I first read Jose Ortega y Gasset while at university decades ago, and I was captivated by his writing and insights. Ortega y Gasset's seminal work, "La Rebelion de las Masas" ("The Revolt of the Masses"), published in 1930, has initially fooled many first-time readers by its title. Contrary to the title's implication, that it is a work extolling the masses coming to power, it is exactly the opposite. It laments the deadening, lowest common denominator effect on everything, from art, music, and culture writ large, to thinking and politics, that the coming of "mass man" has wrought. He contrasts all that is noble in man with all that is common. Ortega y Gasset was a liberal, elected to the Cortes in 1931 in the Republican government of Spain. But he was appalled by the "masses" then, and I'm sure he would be today as well. And he defined "mass man" widely as being not only the lower class of society, but the complacent, self-satisfied bourgeoisie as well. He defined European decadence of the '30s. Here is a quote from the first chapter, "The Coming of the Masses." "The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: 'to be different is to be indecent.' The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated." The quote cited above could have been lifted from Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," but then Nietzsche, with his wonderful insights and aphorisms, railed as well against the common mass attempting to bring anyone with noble thoughts, ability, and insights down to the lowest common denominator. I have always remembered one of Nietszche's aphorism from his work "The Joyful Wisdom," one that easily could have been written by Ortega y Gasset: "Look, look, he runs away from men. They follow him, however, because he runs before them. They are a gregarious lot!" I still have my original copy of "The Revolt of the Masses," and I see how it remains relevant today. Cheers, Bill
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