The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known

Read how "people had a feeling of deep objection about their working lives, their economic lives, the cost of healthcare and goods, but were not clear about the objection, or its cause" — and what is happening today....more

Poetry & Honesty about America  / June 27,  2001

About Vachel Lindsay's great poem "Santa-Fé Trail;" America's beautiful land; and the reason for the huge credit card debt in America. ... more

Logic, Poetry, and California  /April 11, 2001

On March 27, California’s Utilities Commission approved a further rate hike for SCE and PG&E to impose on consumers: as much as 46% over the 10% that has already caused such suffering. It is amid these circumstances, with Californians pained, indignant, furious, that a certain logic is emerging for people — or at least a large phase of that logic....

Mr. Siegel, at the age of 20, presented the logic in its wholeness, and he did so with passion, beautiful prose, and even humor. He wrote in the Modern Quarterly, March 1923: 

The people should own industry because the land (the land here is used to mean things like air, water, animals and so on belonging to nature) from which it comes was made by nobody and so should be owned ... by all. From the land come violets, automobiles, books, watches, silk, and foods of all kinds .... Now if nobody made the land, it is evident, to a really normal human, that everybody living has a right to own it and should own it.

Closely joined with that logic is the following, which I heard him express years later in Aesthetic Realism classes: that which all people need in order to live should not be owned by a few people for profit! ... more

Unions and Beauty  /  February 3, 1999

I comment a little here, however, on one of the most beautiful instances of unity in human history: unions. There are millions of people in America grateful to unions, and many more should be. And there are persons, including in government, who have been trying to destroy unions. But Aesthetic Realism is that which shows that a union, a true union, is aesthetic: like a concerto, a novel, a painting, it is a oneness of opposites. And its aesthetics is its power. 

The oneness of opposites, the aesthetics, of a union is told of in a swift, playful, yet important poem by Eli Siegel, "Lines on an I.W.W. Person." The I.W.W., Industrial Workers of the World, was founded in 1905 by, among others, Eugene V. Debs and "Big Bill" Haywood. It aimed to be "one big union," in which workers of all industries would fight together in behalf of decent wages and working conditions, and the just ownership of America. Some of the true courage in American history was shown by I.W.W. persons, also called Wobblies — for instance, at the Lawrence strike of textile workers in Massachusetts in 1912. ... more

	The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known online
	Current Issues: The most recent issues in which Aesthetic Realism explains the news, happenings in people's lives, events in history, and some of the most moving works in literature.	National Ethics: What honest criteria can we use to be good critics of ethics on the national and international levels? Aesthetic Realism looks at ethics as to loyalty, international affairs, & more.
	Literature / Poetry: Discussing many great works of poetry and prose. Criticism, wrote Eli Siegel compactly, is showing "a good thing as good, a bad thing as bad, and a middling thing as middling."	Love:  How Aesthetic Realism describes the purpose of love--"to like the world honestly through another person." Discussion of what interferes with having real love--today and in history.
	Racism—the Cause & Solution: The Aesthetic Realism understanding of contempt as the cause of racism, and the place of aesthetics in respecting, pleasurably, people different from oneself.	The Economy: Why our economic system has failed to meet the needs of the American people, and the Aesthetic Realism understanding of good will as the basis for successful and fair economics
	Education: The success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in having students learn to read and write--learn science, social studies, art, every subject--and be kinder, less angry, less prejudiced.	Eli Siegel Day in Baltimore: Talks given on August 16, 2002, Eli Siegel's Centenary, placing Mr. Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, his work, in terms of world culture and history.
	Archives: The rich education provided by Aesthetic Realism in issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known which are online.

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John Singer Sargent's Madame X, an Aesthetic Realism Discussion
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Self-Expression and What Interferes: an Aesthetic Realism Discussion
On the Place of Aesthetic Realism in Culture, including Literature
"Is a Person an Aesthetic Situation?" by Eli Siegel: a short explanation of Aesthetic Realism

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