favorite thesis bits of the day XXIII
May 11, 2008 by tyfisher
The effect would be something like that of St Augustine’s ecclesiastical ornaments ‘bordados en plata sobre oro’ as depicted in El Greco’s painting, El entierro del Conde de Orgaz (Huguet del Villar 96).
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From Plato onwards, the history of apicultural imagery applied to poetic production is one of transition from this focus on divine afflatus to a greater regard for artifice, concern for perceptive reception, and attention to the effects a text may work upon an audience. From flights of sweet and hallowed irrationality, the figurative treatments shift their attention to the design and substance of the hive and honeycomb itself, to the text as an artful construction and reading as an act which corresponds to the extraction of honey. The varied, versatile imagery accommodates this transition while still retaining something of the Platonic sense of transcendent mystery behind the creative act and its reception.
