Eli Siegel
|
|
Eli Siegel (August 16, 1902–November 8, 1978), poet and critic, founded the philosophy Aesthetic Realism in 1941. He was raised in Baltimore, Maryland and lived most of his life in New York, New York. In 1944 he married Martha Baird, who had started taking classes with him the year before.[1] (http://print.google.com/print?id=dq8k4KMTer0C&pg=288&lpg=288&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3D%2522eli%2Bsiegel%2522%26btnG%3DSearch%2BPrint&sig=daVhzR23Va_IKkC4sQa7PmInZyM)
| Contents |
Life and works
In 1925 his "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" won the Nation Poetry Prize. (It would later be published in Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, nominated for a National Book Award in 1958.) The poem received critical and popular acclaim. Siegel became a famous member of the Greenwich Village poets', famous for his dramatic readings of Hot Afternoons and other poems. For several years in the 1930s he served as master of ceremonies for regular poetry readings in the Village
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. Its basis is the principle, "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites".[2] (http://www.aestheticrealism.org/es-expl.htm)
In the book, Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There, six working artists explain this principle in life and their own craft. Reviewing them, the Library Journal tells us: "Heraclitus, 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) [3] (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 as 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)
Aesthetic Realism lessons given by Siegel from 1941–1978 —encouraging good will to the world and to people—are the basis of Aesthetic Realism consultations now given at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York and by telephone internationally.
Among Siegel's many published works are:
- Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism (http://www.aestheticrealism.org/es-expl.htm). About Self and World, Smithsonian magazine wrote: "Whether child or adult is spoken of, this book [Self and World] sees a person's concerns with dignity and compassion". (February, 1982) [4] (http://www.definitionpress.org/SAW-smithsonian-review.htm)
- Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, a collection of poems nominated for a National Book Award in 1958. Regarding the title poem, poet William Carlos Williams wrote, "I say definitely that that single poem, out of a thousand others written in the past quarter century, secures our place in the cultural world".[5] (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/WilliamsLetter1951.htm) John Henry Faulk, speaking of the poems in this book, said on CBS radio, "Eli Siegel makes a man glad he's alive".
- Hail, American Development, containing 178 poems, including 32 translations—"all with the same incomparable sensibility at work saying things nobody else could say", wrote Kenneth Rexroth in the New York Times Book Review (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/Review-Rexroth-NYT.htm),; adding, "[Eli Siegel's] translations of Baudelaire and his commentaries on them rank him with the most understanding of the Baudelaire critics in any language". (23 March 1969) [6] (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/Review-Rexroth-NYT.htm)
- James and the Children: A Consideration of Henry James's "Turn of the Screw" and Goodbye Profit System: Update.
Illness and death
Months after surgery for a benign prostatic condition—supposedly simple surgery after which he considered his life ruined—Siegel took his own life on November 8, 1978. His suicide was described by Ellen Reiss in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. In "Always: Love of Reality" (http://www.elisiegel.net/tro-04/tro1626.html) she writes, in part, "Mr. Siegel, as he lived, and also in dying, was true to the philosophy he founded: his purpose was to be fair to the world".
The Aesthetic Realism Foundation continues to teach the philosophy he founded.
The following are lines from Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, one of the poems which Selden Rodman wrote "say more (and more movingly) about here and now than any contemporary poems I have read". (17 August 1957 Saturday Review (http://www.definitionpress.org/HA-SeldenRodman.htm)) These lines stand for what Ellen Reiss has described as Siegel's "beautiful, faithful, passionate, critical, loving attention to the world and humanity".[7] (http://www.elisiegel.net/Tro1339.htm)
The world is waiting to be known; Earth, what it has in it!All words, feelings, movements, words, bodies, clothes, girls,
- The past is in it;
Afternoons have to do with the whole world; And the beauty of mind, feeling knowingly the world!
- trees, stones, things of beauty, books, desires are in it;
- and all are to be known;
Praise for Eli Siegel's work
William Carlos Williams was an early supporter of Siegel's poetry and defender of his views. ("Something to Say", ed. by J.E.B. Breslin {New Directions} (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/WilliamsLetter1951.htm))
In Contemporary Authors Ellen Reiss stated:
"Eli Siegel's work, which in time became Aesthetic Realism, was the cause of some of the largest praise, the largest love in persons, and also the largest resentment… In writing an entry about [him] for Contemporary Authors, you are somewhat in the position you would be writing an entry on the poet John Keats in 1821. That is, if you were to rely on what was said of Keats by most established critics (critics now remembered principally for their injustice to one of the greatest English writers), you would present the author of `Ode to a Nightingale' as a presumptuous `Cockney poet' whose works were `driveling idiocy.' In writing about Eli Siegel [now], you are writing about a contemporary who is great; who all his life met what William Carlos Williams described him as meeting, `the extreme resentment that a fixed, sclerotic mind feels confronting this new'; who now, after his death, is beginning, just barely beginning, to be seen with something like fairness."
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." [8] (http://www.aestheticrealism.org/Press-Articles-on-Aesthetic-Realism/Balt-Evening-Sun-Bready.htm)
Donald Kirkley wrote in the Baltimore Sun (1944) reporting on Siegel's reaction to his 1925 national fame, "Baltimore friends close to him at the time will testify to a certain integrity and steadfastness of purpose which distinguished Mr. Siegel… He refused to exploit a flood of publicity which was enough to float any man to financial comfort…"[9] (http://www.elisiegelcollection.net/Lectures-in-TRO/Tro1335.htm)
William Carlos Williams wrote, "We are not up to Siegel, even yet… He must be tough and supremely gifted…Only today do I realize how important that poem ["Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana"] is in the history of our development as a cultural entity." [10] (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/WilliamsLetter1951.htm)
Sources
- Contemporary Authors 24 October 2002, Thomson / Gale.
- Leila Rosen. Through Aesthetic Realism Interest Wins, Cynicism Loses. The English Record, Journal of the New York State English Council, Vol. 49, no. 1, Fall 1998.
- New Mexico Quarterly — Walter Leuba's review "Whole in Brightness" (Autumn 1957, Vol. XXVII, No. 3). (http://www.definitionpress.org/HA-NMQ-Walter-Leuba.htm)
- Williams, William Carlos. Letter to Martha Baird. Breslin, J.E.B., ed. Something to Say. New York: New Directions, 1985.
- Idaho Senior News, November 1997 by Irene Reiss, an Aesthetic Realism Foundation faculty member.
- Biographical information about Eli Siegel provided by the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company (http://www.aestheticrealismtheatreco.org/elisiegel.htm)
- Kenneth Rexroth. Review of Hail, American Development in the New York Times Book Review (http://www.elisiegel.net/poetry/Review-Rexroth-NYT.htm), 23 March 1969
- Aesthetic Realism and the Change from Homosexuality, ISBN 0910492344
- Janet Whitaker (2002). Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn (http://print.google.com/print?id=4oqPNDnO2agC&lpg=50&dq=%22eli+siegel%22&pg=50&sig=0NXJR_vPWw9RvY_6lbOzMTazFmU), 50-51. Google Print. ISBN 0312290640 (accessed June 16, 2005). Also available in print from St. Martin's Press.
External links
- Website devoted to the memory and works of Eli Siegel. (http://www.elisiegel.net)
- Siegel's lectures. (http://www.elisiegelcollection.net/Eli_Siegel_Lectures.htm)
- Aesthetic Realism Foundation website (http://aestheticrealism.org)
- People who say "Aesthetic Realism is a Cult" (http://michaelbluejay.com/x/)
- Friends of Aesthetic Realism—Countering the Lies (http://www.counteringthelies.com/)
- Monumental Man—The controversial legacy of poet philosopher Eli Siegel (http://www.jewishtimes.com/scripts/edition.pl?now=5/25/1999&SubSectionID=48&ID=2161), Melissa Goldman, Jewish Times, August 22, 2003
- Response to Melissa Goldman's article (http://www.counteringthelies.com/appendix.htm) in the Jewish Times, by the Aesthetic Realism Foundation Board of Directors
- "Aesthetic Realism: A New Foundation for Interdisciplinary Musicology" (http://www.perey-anthropology.net/world_music/escom_1.htm) by Edward Green, Professor of Music
- Review of Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There—Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites by David Bernstein et al, Popular Photography, November 1969 (http://www.definitionpress.org/WHBT-Reviews-PP.htm) by Hattersley, Ralph.
References
- Siegel, Eli, Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. New York: Definition Press, 1981
- Siegel, Eli, Good Will Is Aesthetics. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, issue no. 121, [[23 July 1975
- Siegel, Eli, Hail, American Development. Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1968
- Siegel, Eli, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1958
- Baird, Martha and Reiss, Ellen, eds. The Williams-Siegel Documentary. Including Williams' Poetry Talked about by Eli Siegel, and William Carlos Williams Present and Talking: 1952. New York: Definition Press, 1970