Geetika Kaw Kher on Abhinavagupta’s Ideas on Aesthetics
The language of feelings is not a private language; it is more a system of symbols, a language game that is understood by those who have learned its conventions and usages. Emotions treated in a poem are neither the projections of the reader’s own mental states nor the private feelings of the poet; rather, they are the objective situations abiding in the poem as its cognitive content. Rasa is understood as residing in the situational factors presented in an appropriate language. A poet chooses a theme because he sees a certain promise for developing its emotional possibilities and exploits it by dramatizing its details.
(BTW, I’d written about sulekha before. It’s an amazing Indian expat community portal run out of Austin, Texas. Navigation is hard, but they have a lot of highbrow articles)
Matt Cheney complains about theatre prices:
In 1962, Wole Soyinka wrote an article called “Towards a True Theatre” (collected in Art, Dialogue, and Outrage) in which he criticized African universities for building large, expensive theatres, saying that “this is not America where — to take one example, the Loeb Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a university theatre is built for five to six million dollars, a stupid amoral example of affluent patronage.” True theatre, according to Soyinka, does not come from comfortable spaces crammed full of the latest technology: “No one who is seriously interested in the theatre demands a playground for pushing buttons and operating gaily coloured panels.”
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER on how oil shortages resulting from growing Asian economies could change modern living as we know it:
The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the “level of service” (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart.
Students at Harvard Law School prepare a good and relevant PDF about fair use