Aesthetic Realism: Life, Love & Learning

Leila Rosen, English Educator

Blog: Literature & Life

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel Hawthorne

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July 4th is, of course, a big day in the US, even in this turbulent year. We all know it’s the day on which, in 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence from England’s tyranny—an event that deserves to celebrated with gratitude. It’s the day on which, in 1855, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was published. Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong liked to say it was his birthday, though it was actually a month later.

I always think of another person, too, on the 4th of July: the great writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, born on this day in 1804. I love Hawthorne’s work. Its style has power and grace. It is impelled by ethics, by the need in people to see justly—and it shows Hawthorne’s own vivid awareness of the consequences for a self of being unjust.

In an essay on the writer’s short story “The Man of Adamant,” Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, writes:

If there is any one work, it seems to me, where Hawthorne has presented concisely and richly his attitude to the world and the heart of man, that work is the short story “The Man of Adamant.”…

“All through Hawthorne’s work, there is the admonition: “Do not be alone in concealed glory. Do not separate yourself from the rest of things, so that, darkly, you can establish yourself in another world.”…

“Indeed, a meaning never absent from Hawthorne’s writing is that being alone makes for pride, but it also makes for an unresting sense of iniquity within and a sense of hardening that is also corruption. Perhaps Hawthorne never said this so plainly, so unmistakably, so compactly as he does in “The Man of Adamant.”

Because Aesthetic Realism, as conscious study, teaches about the two opposing desires in us—that which Hawthorne is illustrating in this story, the desire to have contempt, and our greatest desire, to like and be just to reality and see our deep relation to other people—it is the education every person needs.

So I recommend two things: 1) Read “Hawthorne’s “The Man of Adamant,” by Eli Siegel, and the story itself; and 2) find out about how to study in Aesthetic Realism consultations. They are thrilling, kind, eye-opening education in how to know and like the world and yourself honestly.

More Maxims by Eli Siegel from Damned Welcome

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Two weeks ago, I pointed to several Aesthetic Realism maxims by Eli Siegel from his book Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims. These statements—many of them swift and pithy—are, he wrote, “meant to bother into appreciation.” I find myself thinking of some of these maxims as I try to make sense of what’s happening in our confusing time.

So here are others that encourage me very much.

“If you have time, remember it’s a privilege.”

“The universe, being clever, has given scientists trouble.”

“Let us not be angry at the way we’re angry.”

“It hasn’t yet been scientifically proved that any lovely thing is really over.”

“We are of the world; our job is to be fair to the preposition.”

Aesthetic Realism Maxims by Eli Siegel

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As we’re all looking to make sense of a world that has beautiful spring flowers and a terrifying pandemic, we need the way of seeing that’s in the study of Aesthetic Realism. A means to this is the wonderful maxims by Eli Siegel in his book Damned Welcome. In the preface to the book, Mr. Siegel writes:

These maxims are…in behalf of a world too often seen as unkind, dull, and just too bewildering for anything. It is better to be bewildered by an Aesthetic Realism maxim about things than by things themselves….

The present maxims…are on the side of a reasoned gaiety, and a spontaneous, bubbling seriousness. They are meant to bother into appreciation.

Here are some that I love, and feel are relevant to our time. More will follow!

“Our loveliest memories can be helped by our most fundamental hopes.”

“Sighs should be efficient; if not, we should long for their departure.”

“A person is courageous who is comfortable in larger territory than is usual.”

“When we don’t want people to get the hard facts about ourselves, we are not in favor of these three things: the facts, people, ourselves.”

“Only a person who loves people can be alone rightly.”

“Being oneself is a lifetime job, not to be shirked when we sleep.”

Eli Siegel’s majestic poem “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” on film

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Aesthetic Realism itself began with Eli Siegel’s seeing of the relations among all the things reality has. It showed through his early writing in poetry and prose. He later wrote: “It was these thoughts that, becoming passionate and musical, took the form of “Hot  ‘Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana.'” This grandly sweeping poem of relation—relation in time and space, the relation among the outward doings of life and the inner thoughts of people, the relation of the inanimate world and living beings—won the Nation magazine’s poetry prize in 1925.

The poem begins:

Quiet and green was the grass of the field,
The sky was whole in brightness,
And O, a bird was flying, high, there in the sky,
So gently, so carelessly and fairly.

Award-winning filmmaker and Aesthetic Realism consultant Ken Kimmelman made a film of this majestic poem. Historian Howard Zinn wrote: “Ken Kimmelman’s reproduction, on film, of Eli Siegel’s magisterial poem, is an extraordinary achievement. It matches, in its visual beauty, the elegance of Siegel’s words, and adds the dimension of stunning imagery to an already profound work of art.”

You’ll be stirred to your depths by this great combination of words and visual images. Now, more than ever, we need to feel that beauty is just as real as the things that can frighten us. I’m grateful to be learning that from Aesthetic Realism. I hope this film encourages everyone else to feel it too.

Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana

Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: film

A lesson on viruses, based on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method

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At this critical time, as people all over the world are worried about the power of a virus, I want to share with readers this important article by my friend and colleague Sally Ross. She taught her high school biology students about viruses in a way that we can all learn from, including as to how to see what’s different from ourselves. The lesson is based on the great Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, which was also the basis of my English classes for many years.