GG: Lacrimosa: Physiology and the Arts...

["Joseph Podlesnik" <veronese@jerseycape.com>]

To David (and Kristen and Josh):

Your questions and input are wonderful. I hope you will not mind my
meandering, encyclopedic reply.

No, I can't say that a literary work has ever moved me to tears. Why is
this? (On the other hand, perhaps the real reason we rarely weep when
viewing visual art is simply that the tears might cloud our vision.) On a
more serious note: Why do we emote at listening to sounds or well up with
tears by looking at pictures or reading a good story? In his pivotal book,
"The Act of Creation" (1969), in a chapter titled, "The Logic of the Moist
Eye", Arthur Koestler tried to shed some light on this:

>"Listening to the organ in a cathedral, looking at a majestic landscape
from the top of a mountain, observing an infant hesitantly returning a
smile, being in love -- any of these experiences may cause welling up of
emotions, a moistening or overflowing of the eyes, while the body is
becalmed and drained of it's tensions. A few steps higher on the
intensity-scale, and the 'I' seems no longer to exist, to dissolve in the
experience like a grain of salt in water; awareness becomes de-personalized
and expands into 'the oceanic feeling of limitless extension and oneness
with the universe'.* 
     Here, then, we see the self-transcending emotions displayed in their
purest form. Once you start fondling the smiling baby and making a fuss of
it, an active possessive element enters into the situation and the spell is
broken. The purely self-transcending emotions do not tend towards action,
but towards quiescence, tranquility, and catharsis. ... The 'blending of
the finite with the infinite' can become so intense that it evokes Faust's
prayer: "O Augenblick verweile" -- let this moment last for eternity, let
me die. But there is nothing morbid in this; it is a yearning for an even
more complete communion, the ultimate catharsis or "samadhi".
     The reason for their passive, quietistic nature is that the
self-transcending emotions cannot be consummated by any specific voluntary
action. You cannot take the mountain panorama home with you; the surest
method to break the charm is clicking your camera. You cannot merge with
the infinite or dissolve in the universe by any exertion of the body; ...
To be 'overwhelmed' by love, wonder, devotion, 'enraptured' by a smile,
'entranced' by beauty -- each verb expresses a passive state, a surrender;
the surplus of emotion cannot be worked off in action -- it can only be
consummated in "internal", visceral and glandular processes.
      .... transitions between 'weeping in joy' and 'weeping in sorrow'
reflect the relative nature of 'pleasure' and 'unpleasure' ("Unlust",
disphoria, as distinct from physical pain). Emotions have been called
'overheated drives'. A drive becomes 'overheated' when it has no immediate
outlet; or when its intensity is so increased that the normal outlets are
insufficient; or for both reasons. A moderate amount of overheating may be
experienced as a pleasurable arousal, thrill, excitement, or appetite --
while anticipating (or imagining) the consummatory act."<

Kristen, as you pointed out, part of our rapture with music (or films or
plays, for that matter) is knowing full well what will happen next.
Actually, I think we pretend we don't know what will happen next, then
brace for it, and finally luxuriate in its bliss.

--Joseph 


(*Romain Rolland describing the character of religious experience in a
letter to Freud -- who regretfully professed never to have felt anything of
the sort.)