The Classical Condition
A lot of times when older people hear me talk about my love for Neil Young; they raise their eyebrows in surprise, wondering what I’m doing listening to “the music of their generation”. If they only knew that I am not the only person under 40 who can openly acknowledge the brilliance of Neil Young. Like Bob Dylan, he was one of the great folk rock poets of our time, and his legacy didn’t die out as time progressed and the music scene changed. Neil Young will always be first and foremost on my musical repertoire, and while other artists come and go my love for him and his timeless poetry and music lingers. Neil Young conveys the music of the young spirit, a subject that there will always be a place for in the world of art. Like classical literature, classic rock set a standard that has been filtered through to our present culture.
How can we explain a musician like Neil Young, whose moment in the spot light has long since past, still being appreciated and respected by my generation, while many of his colleagues from that period go unrecognized? Why is it that ten years from now, English Professors will not be teaching A million little pieces as part of their curriculum, but the classics that have been taught for ages will remain in the curriculum? Where do we draw the line between trendy and timeless? I want to explore this notion of the timeless in literature and art: what does it take to endure through the generations?
I remember the first time I heard “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young. I had this strange sensation that the song already existed within me; it was as if it was intuitive. This sort of experience is not uncommon for me: when it seems that all of my prior thoughts, feelings and memories have culminated in that one perfectly crafted song, or sentence, or utterance. In that culmination there is a strong sense relief in the release of mental tension; the condition has been acknowledged and therefore, we are not alone. This seems to be a major contributor to the timeless nature of art: that art which concerns itself with the universal human experience. The psychologist Carl Jung would agree that an artist strikes on the timeless when their work dips into the “collective unconscious”, which he explained as being a “reservoir of the experiences of our species”. The collective unconscious is said to exist prior to our experiences. This explanation would account for the constant realization of strange coincidences and astounding epiphanies we encounter in the classics.
The best things in life seem to be those that have endured through time and still manage to bring us joy today. My favorite “classic” we explored in English 213 was Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This thick collection of mesmerizing stories has the reader bear witness to one extraordinary transformation after another, all under the beautifully kept theme of change. Ovid’s Metamorphoses has endured through the ages because of its premise: all things change, yet never die. His observation is perfectly aligned with the theme of our class: that all that is past possesses our present, meaning that everything playing out in our culture and in our lives are vestiges of classical myth, timeless truths that we keep coming back to. Our reality is permeated by myth. This concept seems completely ambiguous since, by definition, myth means story and reality is real. Just like in the library, fiction and non-fiction should remain segregated. But we are constantly seeing the two merge every day without looking farther than the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Perhaps the fact that mythologies are recurring is an indicator of their ultimate truth.
The classics and mythologies (I am using the two interchangeably) acknowledge and are built upon our collective human experience. They operate on something of a cyclic time scale, where everything has happened before and will happen again. Therefore everything links; everything seems like a coincidence, because in the realm of myth we continually return to the same ideas. Mythology is apart from scientific and historical truths, which are constantly being re-evaluated and revised. Poetic truth is constantly being relived, in a process that we are only vaguely aware of, until we encounter it in the classics. We know poetic truth when we feel universally human, when we comprehend our condition. Classic literature comes to us with answers to questions about ourselves that we could never really wrap our minds around, until it was related to us in such a way. And the culmination of that quest for universal truth
is why we come back to these pieces days, years, decades, and centuries later. They comfort us any time. They do not operate by time. They are without: Timeless.
How can we explain a musician like Neil Young, whose moment in the spot light has long since past, still being appreciated and respected by my generation, while many of his colleagues from that period go unrecognized? Why is it that ten years from now, English Professors will not be teaching A million little pieces as part of their curriculum, but the classics that have been taught for ages will remain in the curriculum? Where do we draw the line between trendy and timeless? I want to explore this notion of the timeless in literature and art: what does it take to endure through the generations?
I remember the first time I heard “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young. I had this strange sensation that the song already existed within me; it was as if it was intuitive. This sort of experience is not uncommon for me: when it seems that all of my prior thoughts, feelings and memories have culminated in that one perfectly crafted song, or sentence, or utterance. In that culmination there is a strong sense relief in the release of mental tension; the condition has been acknowledged and therefore, we are not alone. This seems to be a major contributor to the timeless nature of art: that art which concerns itself with the universal human experience. The psychologist Carl Jung would agree that an artist strikes on the timeless when their work dips into the “collective unconscious”, which he explained as being a “reservoir of the experiences of our species”. The collective unconscious is said to exist prior to our experiences. This explanation would account for the constant realization of strange coincidences and astounding epiphanies we encounter in the classics.
The best things in life seem to be those that have endured through time and still manage to bring us joy today. My favorite “classic” we explored in English 213 was Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This thick collection of mesmerizing stories has the reader bear witness to one extraordinary transformation after another, all under the beautifully kept theme of change. Ovid’s Metamorphoses has endured through the ages because of its premise: all things change, yet never die. His observation is perfectly aligned with the theme of our class: that all that is past possesses our present, meaning that everything playing out in our culture and in our lives are vestiges of classical myth, timeless truths that we keep coming back to. Our reality is permeated by myth. This concept seems completely ambiguous since, by definition, myth means story and reality is real. Just like in the library, fiction and non-fiction should remain segregated. But we are constantly seeing the two merge every day without looking farther than the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Perhaps the fact that mythologies are recurring is an indicator of their ultimate truth.
The classics and mythologies (I am using the two interchangeably) acknowledge and are built upon our collective human experience. They operate on something of a cyclic time scale, where everything has happened before and will happen again. Therefore everything links; everything seems like a coincidence, because in the realm of myth we continually return to the same ideas. Mythology is apart from scientific and historical truths, which are constantly being re-evaluated and revised. Poetic truth is constantly being relived, in a process that we are only vaguely aware of, until we encounter it in the classics. We know poetic truth when we feel universally human, when we comprehend our condition. Classic literature comes to us with answers to questions about ourselves that we could never really wrap our minds around, until it was related to us in such a way. And the culmination of that quest for universal truth
is why we come back to these pieces days, years, decades, and centuries later. They comfort us any time. They do not operate by time. They are without: Timeless.
posted by Carly Parelius at 9:57 AM
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