| He's making a more fundamental mistake, borne by his lack of emotional range. He's arguing that every poem cannot have a soul, only during the recitation of a poem, by a live performer, can the work take on the kind of soulful meaning. Yet this criteria, a human must perform art for it to have a soul, eliminates all non-performance art. Painting, sculpture, etc. all has no soul. Yet this is obviously not true. A great painting has soul just as much as any other art. So what happens when you have a poem, crafted as a sculpture? We've already determined that sculptures have a "soul", therefore something like this http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ-aNk/SxMre-2FXnI/AAAAAAAANW... has a soul, but no human performed it. The emotional connection is made via the writer and the sculpture (who may even be the same person). Yet, no human can "perform" this sculpture. In cases like the OP, the music we have here is no different than a sculpture of the composer's intention. No human performs it, yet it's no less valid than if it was written down for an orchestra of painists to perform. |
