Relationship of the Solitary Self and the Public Self - Essay Example

Relationship of the Solitary Self and the Public Self Three authors are cited in this paper, namely: Juhani Pallasmaa in “The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses,” wherein he discusses sight as it relates ‘to human rootedness to the world;’ Oliver Sacks in “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See,” where he discusses the implications of individual blindness within the context of “living fully in the world constructed by other senses;” Azar Nafizi discusses the convergence of truth and memory amid the “mistrust of what we call everyday reality” in “Selections in Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Evidently, the will of the ‘solitary self’ in establishing a generating relationship with the ‘public self’ is instrumental in creating a positive impact on reality--be it the merging of truth and memory amid the uncertainty of day to day experiences, or the interiority and exteriority of sight and the senses having to do with our ‘human rootedness to the world, or the struggle to live fully in a world created by other senses. The solitary self, in order to relate to the public self, creates a thoroughfare with which to wander away from the unfriendly reality. Sound and sight—each to its own function—have sense, we will explore! Musicians Oscar Hammerstein, Simon and Garfunkel, celebrate sound of either of silence or of music. The first describes the fields being alive with the sound of music (The Sound of Music) and the latter calls darkness his friend (The Sound of Silence.) “Sight is the sense of the solitary observer, whereas hearing creates a sense of connection and solidarity; our look wanders lonesomely in the dark depths of a cathedral, but the sound of the organ makes us immediately experience our affinity with space (Pallasma 289).” When a mentor in a journalism class advises the students to ‘look into their heart and write’ the mentor is actually telling them to close their eyes and feel and listen and discern the truth, the beauty about the issue they are to write. It is in listening that one can hear the rhythm of one’s heartbeats, the pulsation of whatever goodness is within. Julie Andrews (Sound of Music, the movie) belts out ‘my heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze.’ Pallasmaa insists that ‘hearing creates a connection and solidarity’ between our being and that of the highest Entity. The blind prophet Teirisias, a character in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and Antigone, could see the truth which the sighted ones do not see. Oliver Sacks in “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind Can See,” portrays the loss of sight not as a deterrent in facing reality. “Being a ‘whole body seer,’ for Hull, means shifting his attention, his center of gravity, to the other senses, and he writes again and again, of how these have assumed a new richness of power.” Thus he speaks of rain, never before accorded much attention, can now delineate a whole landscape for him, for the sound on the garden path is different from the sound as it drums on the lawn, or on the bushes, on his garden, or on the fence dividing it on the road (Pallasmaa 508).” With the loss of the physical sight one is not left dead nor incapacitated to live a full life. Most often other senses like hearing, imagination and touch are opened wider. The deepening of these other sensibilities which are likely to be much keener than before tends to compensate for the loss. During frustrating moments in a person’s life, what is there to live for? “This class was the color of my dreams. I entailed an active withdrawal from a reality that had turned hostile. I wanted very badly to hold on to my rare mood of jubilance and optimism for in the back of my mind I didn’t know what awaited me at the end of this project. You are aware, a friend had said, that you are withdrawing into yourself, and now that your relations with the university is cut, your whole contact world will be mainly restricted to one room. Where will you go from here, he had asked. Withdrawal into one’s dreams is dangerous, I reflected, padding into the room to change; this I had learned from Navokov’s crazy dreamers, like Kinbote and Humbert (Nafizi 423).” In countries where there is too much deprivation especially of the artistic or academic pursuits, one has to make an underground tunnel in order to escape from the real physical world. So do Nafizi’s ‘crazy dreamers who have to camouflage their suits and appearance to conceal ‘painted nails and large gold earrings’ lest they be detected by the authority. It was said of the romantic realist novelist Ayn Rand that as a child in Communist Russia she dreamt of living in America which for her was ‘the freest’ country in the world—and she did years later! In whatever circumstances the one inspired by the Muses must find a way to survive hostile reality. Written at the entrance of the Fine Arts Building of the University of Chicago is this dictum: All things shall pass. Art alone endures. What price can an artist pay for his creation? “Experiencing a work of art is a private dialogue between the work and the viewer, one that excludes other interactions.” Art is memory’s mise un scene, and art is made by the alone for the alone,” as Cyril Connoly writes in The Unquiet Grave. Significantly, these are sentences underlined by Luis Barragan in his copy of this book of poetry. A sense of melancholy lies beneath all moving experiences of art; this is the sorrow of beauty’s immaterial temporality. Art projects an unattainable ideal, an ideal of beauty that momentarily touches the eternal.” (291) Nafizi’s ‘crazy dreamers’ are just some of the ‘melancholy alone’ who experience the ideal of beauty ‘that touches the eternal.’ John Keats in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ tells the world that ‘knowing truth and beauty’ is the only thing one needs to know. Within the deep recesses of our unconscious are memories, dreams and wishes very dear to us—a childhood memory, or a place we have never visited, a landscape we want to paint. Man’s love for life and the beauty life itself underlie the creation of art. To the blind bard Homer is attributed the The Iliad and The Odyssey. Writer and lecturer Helen Keller who became deaf and blind in infancy learned to listen by touching the speaker’s face. “For those who lost sight so early, the very concept of sight or blindness soon cease to have meaning, and there is no sense to lose the world of vision, only of living fully in the world constructed by the other senses. “…it seemed he had been extremely successful, developing a remarkable power of generating, holding and manipulating images in his mind, so much so that he had been able to construct an imagined visual world that seemed almost real and intense to him as the perceptual one he had lost—and indeed sometimes more real and intense, a sort of controlled dreams and hallucination. This imagery moreover enabled him to do things which might have been scarcely possible for a blind man (Sacks 510).” A tree when pruned would grow new branches, greener and more luscious, more shady. Amazingly, in the absence of the other senses the will of the private self to connect with the real world determines one’s capacity to overcome obstacles. The same can be applied in the pursuit of artistic endeavors. The blind will see by touching, by manipulating ‘images in his mind.’ So did the people in Nafizi’s study group. Despite the surveillance of the Khomeini government they persisted in pursuing what they wanted to do. “An absurd fictionality ruled over our lives. We tried to live in the open spaces, in the chinks created between that room which had become our protective cocoon, and the censors world of witches and goblins outside. Which of these two worlds are more real and to which do we really belong? We no longer knew the answers. Perhaps one way of finding out the truth was to do what we did: to try to imaginatively articulate these two worlds and, through that process, give shape to our vision and identity (Nafizi 435).” ‘…a world that seemed almost real and intense’ surfaced for them in their struggle for survival so to say in their pursuit of their ideal. Day to day in their two worlds they would go wherever the wind blows and they love it. Despite the loss of other senses and the loneliness of the strange world they live in, they sail along, the waves are in their favor. The self, despite ‘lacks and losses and difficult byways,’ discovers tunnels, crevices and certain dirt roads that will lead to a reality of pleasant-view horizons. Sources Cited Azar, Nafisi. Selections from Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books Pallasmaa, Juhani. Excerpts fro The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses Sacks, Oliver. The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See Expository Writing Reading: First author: Juhani Pallasmaa, Experts from the eye of the Skin: Architecture and Senses Second author: Oliver Sacks, The Mind’s Eye: “What the Blind See” Third Author : Azar Nafisi, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran” In “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” Azar NAfisi discusses the convergence of truth and memory amid what she calls the “mistrust of what we call everyday reality”(262) She characterizes and discusses the women of her study group through their personal “absurd fictionality”(264). Juhani Pallasmaa discusses the interiority and exteriority of sight and the senses as it relates to “human rootedness in the world”, thus indicating a relationship of self and its larger world context(284,286). Similarly, Oliver Sacks discusses the implications of individual blindness within the context of “living fully in a world constructed by the other senses”(305). Using all three texts to supplement your thoughts, answer the following questions: How does the relationship between the ‘solitary self’ and the ‘public self’ influence reality? To answer this question you may wish to consider How do Sacks, Nafisi, and Pallasmaa discuss the solitary, individual life? How are these unique or similar? How do all three authors discuss the determination of self in a larger public context? How is this relationship with the world characterized? What implications can be drawn from the relationship between the solitary life and the larger public life? How does these implications influence the experience of reality presented by all three authors? How is reality ultimately defined? Structure of the paper: Five paragraphs: one introduction, three body paragraphs, one conclusion Structure of the paper Introduction: A thesis statement that appears as the last sentence of the introductory paragraph. Body Paragraph 1 Sentence 1: A topic sentence that makes an original claim about a specific topic. Sentence 2/3: Introduction of Quote one. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice AND provide background necessary to understand the quote (contextualize it). Sentence 4:Quote 1from the author A, integrated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 5/6: Interpret or analyze the first quote. You should tell why the quote is in YOUR paper (recall your thesis), not just in the author’s essay. Sentence 7/8:The bridge, transition, or connection between quote one and quote two. Make sure you explain the relationship between the two quotes. If you can pick up key words from the first quote, great! Sentence 9/10: Introduce the 2nd quote. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice and provide background necessary to understand the quote. Sentence 11: Quote 2 from the author B, incorporated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 12/13: Interpretation or analysis of the 2nd quote. If you can explain the second quote using key words from the first quote, great. Sentence 14:An original claim or idea about the insight you’ve gained from working with the two quotes together. Body Paragraph 2 Sentence 1: A topic sentence that makes an original claim about a specific topic. Sentence 2/3: Introduction of Quote one. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice AND provide background necessary to understand the quote (contextualize it). Sentence 4:Quote 1from the author C, integrated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 5/6: Interpret or analyze the first quote. You should tell why the quote is in YOUR paper (recall your thesis), not just in the author’s essay. Sentence 7/8:The bridge, transition, or connection between quote one and quote two. Make sure you explain the relationship between the two quotes. If you can pick up key words from the first quote, great! Sentence 9/10: Introduce the 2nd quote. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice and provide background necessary to understand the quote. Sentence 11: Quote 2 from the author A, incorporated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 12/13: Interpretation or analysis of the 2nd quote. If you can explain the second quote using key words from the first quote, great. Sentence 14:An original claim or idea about the insight you’ve gained from working with the two quotes together. Body Paragraph 3 Sentence 1: A topic sentence that makes an original claim about a specific topic. Sentence 2/3: Introduction of Quote one. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice AND provide background necessary to understand the quote (contextualize it). Sentence 4:Quote 1from the author B integrated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 5/6: Interpret or analyze the first quote. You should tell why the quote is in YOUR paper (recall your thesis), not just in the author’s essay. Sentence 7/8:The bridge, transition, or connection between quote one and quote two. Make sure you explain the relationship between the two quotes. If you can pick up key words from the first quote, great! Sentence 9/10: Introduce the 2nd quote. Point to the main idea you want your reader to notice and provide background necessary to understand the quote. Sentence 11: Quote 2 from the author C, incorporated smoothly into your own sentence. Sentence 12/13: Interpretation or analysis of the 2nd quote. If you can explain the second quote using key words from the first quote, great. Sentence 14:An original claim or idea about the insight you’ve gained from working with the two quotes together. Conclusion: Sentence one (or even half a sentence) hooks back to your thesis statement. Don’t repeat it exactly but remind yourself and your reader that this is what you have been exploring all along. You’ve “kept your promise” to stick to and develop this position in answer to the assignment question. Read More