| Eli Siegel |
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LIFE In 1925, his "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" won the poets, famous for his dramatic readings of ''Hot Afternoons'' and other poems. His two-word poem, ''One Question'', won recognition as the shortest poem in the English language. It appeared in the ''Literary Review'' of the ''New York Evening Post'' in 1925: ::::''One Question'' :::::I — :::::Why? For several years in the 1930 s he served as master of ceremonies for regular poetry readings that were well-known for combining poetry and jazz. Also in the 1930s Siegel was a regular reviewer for ''Scribner's'' magazine and the '' New York Evening Post '' Literary Review. In 1944 he married Martha Baird ( University Of Iowa ), who had started taking classes with him the year before. Baird would later be Secretary of the Society for Aesthetic Realism. {Link without Title} From 1941 to 1978, Siegel gave many thousand lectures on Poetry , History , Economics — a wide variety of the Arts and Sciences . And he gave thousands of individual Aesthetic Realism lessons to men, women, and children. In these lessons the way of seeing the world based on aesthetics — which is Aesthetic Realism — was taught. Siegel gave Aesthetic Realism lessons from 1941 – 1978 with the purpose of encouraging Good Will to the world and to people. At the age of 76, Siegel had an operation for a benign he founded: his purpose was to be fair to the world". AESTHETIC REALISM The basis of Aesthetic Realism is the principle, "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites". In the book, ''Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There'', six working artists explain this principle in life and their own craft. Reviewing them, the '', Aristotle , Kant , Hegel , and even Martin Buber have posited Contraries and Polarities in their philosophies. Siegel, however, seems to be the first to demonstrate that 'all beauty is the making one of the permanent opposites in reality'." ( 1 September 1969 ) [http://www.definitionpress.org/WHBT-Review-LJ.htm The ethics Siegel taught—"the art of enjoying justice"—includes this definition of ''good will'': "The desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful". Good will is necessary, he stated, for a person to like him– or herself: "This desire is the fundamental thing in human consciousness". (''The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known'', issue no. 121) The Aesthetic Realism Foundation continues to teach the philosophy that Siegel founded. The Foundation gives consultations in New York and by telephone internationally. WORKS Among Siegel's many published works are:
Comments on Siegel's work William Carlos Williams was an early supporter of Siegel's poetry and defender of his views. Williams wrote: I can't tell you how important Siegel's work is in the light of my present understanding of the modern poem. He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists. And Williams continued: The other side of the picture is the extreme resentment that a fixed, sclerotic mind feels confronting this new. It shows itself by the violent opposition Siegel received from the "authorities" whom I shall not dignify by naming and after that by neglect ( "Something to Say", ed. by J.E.B. Breslin, New Directions ). In ''Contemporary Authors'' Ellen Reiss stated:
Huntington Cairns , Secretary of the National Gallery Of Art in Washington D.C., described Siegel's place in the understanding of aesthetics—the branch of philosophy which studies beauty—as follows: I believe that Eli Siegel was a genius. He did for aesthetics what Spinoza did for ethics. {Link without Title} |
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