Under the gaze of Ulysses –

Species, words and other landscapes

a TRAVEL NOTEBOOK by Manuel Valente Alves

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Philistine refusal

“Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. [...]

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art – and, by analogy, our own experience – more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. [...]

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” –– Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1964)

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