§66 Boring Modern Nature
“…Alfred … finds… nature — quite threatening because it is quite uncontrolled and it makes him cold, and it blows him away…His inspiration comes from art, from painting, from literature…’ (“Alfred Brendel — In Portrait” 1996: 00.59.58- 01.00.45)
Why does pianist Alfred Brendel have an aversion to nature?
One interpretation previously offered (see §64), departs from the idea that a work of art’s production requires chaos accompanied by a ‘sense’ or ‘veil’ of order. In Brendel’s case, order stems rather from the arts than nature, which might even undermine order. To complement this answer, the following provides a historical-cultural analysis.
In his essay Shipwreck with Spectator*, Blumenberg (1979) investigates the historical conceptualization of the metaphor of seafaring. In antiquity seafaring is bound up with a view of nature setting boundaries for humans, resulting in a close relationship with ideas of transgressions and punishments:
‘What drives man to cross the high seas is at the same time the crossing of the boundary of his natural needs.’ (Blumenberg 1997, 28–29)
In Blumenberg’s historical analysis it is not until the Enlightenment that a fundamental metaphorological transformation takes place:
‘In complete contrast to this, it will be one of the fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment that shipwreck is the price that must be paid in order to avoid that complete calming of the sea winds that would make all worldly commerce impossible.’ (ibid)
This constitutes the modern transformation — as a taming of nature. Perhaps the nature that the modern Alfred Brendel relates to is not an ‘uncontrolled’ wilderness but corresponds to the piercing critique of that Ernst Jünger once hinted at: modernity is boring.
‘One of the best objections that has been raised against [the bourgeois] valuation [for a good, rational and ‘fundamentally secure humanity’] is that under such circumstances life would be intolerably boring.’ (Jünger 1993, 29)
Modern nature, then, to the true artist, is a drag.
*‘Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer (1979)
References
“Alfred Brendel — In Portrait.” 1996. BBC 4.
Blumenberg, Hans. 1997. Shipwreck with Spectator [Orig. Schiffbruch Mit Zuschauer, 1979]. London: The MIT Press.
Jünger, Ernst. 1993. “On Danger [Über Die Gefahr, 1931].” New German Critique, no. 59 (Spring — Summer, [1931): 27–32.
Originally published at anowmedia.com on October 19, 2018.
