The London Lounge

"Well written works shall be the only ones to pass down to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the singularity of facts, even the novelty of the discoveries do not warrant immortality: if the works that contain them only speak of triffles, if they are written without taste, without noblety and without genius, they shall perish, because the knowledge, the facts and the discoveries are easily reaped, carried away and gain more by being assembled by better skilled hands. These things are external to the man, style is the man himself. Therefore style cannot be either taken, carried away or altered: if it is elevated, noble, sublime, the author shall be equally admired in all times; because only truth may last and even be eternal. A beautiful style is only such by the infinite number of truths that it presents. All the intellectual beauty it contains, all the relationships that it consists of are pieces of truth just as useful, and perhaps more useful to the human spirit than those that make up the subject itself."

excerpt from "Discourse on Style" presented to the French Academy on August 25th 1753 by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Words themselves do not constitute style - they only carry it, make it possible to give it expression.
The same with sound and music. Sergiu Celibidache makes a striking statement in an interview: "Music has nothing to do with sound". Doesn't it sound strikingly similar to Michael Alden's "Style has nothing to do with clothes"?...

Well-written words. Man brings style to the world but we should add that his style is influenced by the world he lives in. We cannot grasp it fully without including his outer life and the symbolic power of artefacts and people that he loves. As Heidegger said, the being for whom Being is what matters, not just Being

In my view, the outer world is not a determining factor or a cause, but a medium of expression, a field of manifestation of Style, which transcends it and is more of an effect of resonance between the inner and the outer world. Much like music with respect to sound, as explained here in the first 45 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y8l2Fb-ajY
It is like a wave on the surface of the water: without the water, we could not see it, but it would still be there as an impulse, an invisible wave - it would perhaps be a sound wave, for instance, or another kind for which we have no organ of perception.
The outer world does not put limits to Style, does not constrict or restrict it, does not alter its substance, though it only offers limited possibilities of expression.
Our quest regards the understanding of what Style IS, its Being (Sein), and - since we cannot get to that essence in a direct, unmediated manner, as phenomenology proposes - we start from its manifestations in the outer world, which we can perceive directly. However, to conclude from this that the substance of Style has anything to do with the medium in which it manifests compromises the quest and provides a distorted answer: the wave that we can see is not a property of water, it exists beyond that, it transcends water itself. We are after Being, not after beings - in Heidegger's own terms.
It is much like deciphering metaphors - they approach and at the same time depart from their object. They do not define, but they can help understand, grasp the nature of the metaphor's object. They help us experience it, even if in a limited, incomplete manner. By interpreting the manifestations of Style we understand, bit by bit, what Style must be, that causes these numerous and various effects.
It is not a matter of defining it (much like music can hardly be defined - not the articulated and structured sequence of sounds, but MUSIC as we experience it); rather, it is a matter of experiencing it (erleben in phenomenological terms). It is only through experiencing it that we come closer to its essence, but we should never confound the substance and the manifestations.
So what it Style? Beyond words, sounds, clothes... it is the man himself, in what cannot be defined, but fully experienced, says Buffon. The man resonates with the world and, whatever kind of environment he has at hand or whatever instruments, that will be the medium of manifestation. Of course place, time, culture etc. have an influence on HOW Style manifests - but what is the red thread running through all times, places and cultures, what is the common denominator of these various manifestations, which we still recognize as Style even if we live in different times, places and cultures? Perhaps the truth, of which Buffon writes that it is the substance of the "beau style". And which is eternal and recognizable as such in any time or place. According to Schiller, anyone who arrives at beauty finds truth behind it.
Celibidache tells in an interview how he received the greatest compliment, how he lived the greatest satisfaction after a musical performance: a lady from the audience came to him after the concert, looking very serene and collected, without any frenzical enthusiasm and, instead of praising his "interpretation" or talking about how "beautiful" it was, she simply looked into his eyes and said: "It is so!"
Perhaps some meta-physics of Style, going beyond observation and into questioning the essence, would not harm us after so much phenomenology. It might help us grasp that there is a deeper (or higher) meaning that is found, at any rate, beyond the physical "outer world".

"What we call reality is a relation between those sensations and those memories which simultaneously encircle us — a relation which a cinematographic vision destroys because its form separates it from the truth to which it pretends to limit itself — that unique relation which the writer must discover in order that he may link two different states of being together for ever in a phrase. In describing objects one can make those which figure in a particular place succeed each other indefinitely; the truth will only begin to emerge from the moment that the writer takes two different objects, posits their relationship, the analogue in the world of art to the only relationship of causal law in the world of science, and encloses it within the circle of fine style. In this, as in life, he fuses a quality common to two sensations, extracts their essence and in order to withdraw them from the contingencies of time, unites them in a metaphor, thus chaining them together with the indefinable bond of a verbal alliance."

Marcel Proust, "Le Temps Retrouve", translated by Steven Hudson
(my bold and underlining)

“Young man, read Homerus, Plato, Lucretius, Virgilius, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Shelley, Emerson, Goethe, La Fontaine, Racine, Villon, Théophile, Bossuet, La Bruyère,Descartes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire, Renan, France... you shall learn that if your spirit is original and strong, your works will only be so if you are absolutely sincere, and that the pastiche, the sacrifice to a form that you like, the desire to be original resemble the somewhat hidden – and therefore very dangerous – appearances of insincerity, and then, but that is only secondary, that simpleness possesses infinite elegance, and genuiness – untellable fascination…”

Marcel Proust, from a letter to young Daniel Halévy who had asked his opinion on a volume of poetry

So where is our freedom? Do we choose? SHOULD we choose, as if from a shop window?

“Thus I had already reached the conclusion that we are in no way free with respect to a work of art, that we do not create it as we please but that it pre-exists in us and we are compelled as though it were a law of nature to discover it because it is at once hidden from us and necessary.”

Marcel Proust, “Time Regained”

Life as a work of art...

Perhaps that is why Buffon writes that “Style is the man himself”. The real freedom of choice is to choose to follow what is already within:

“To be free is to be unable to do otherwise.”

Sergiu Celibidache

The freedom to be ourselves.
Back to truth, therefore...
Our aim should be authenticity. Originality simply follows as a consequence.

Costi wrote:Our aim should be authenticity.

- which includes recognizing powers that make us false

Gruto wrote:

Costi wrote:Our aim should be authenticity.

- which includes recognizing powers that make us false

Of course. That's what we need to do: recognize them and avoid submitting to them, to routine, to habit. Eyes wide open - on the inside!