![]() I mean that the tragic emotion is static. The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. Dedalus, in questioning the nature of aesthetics, asks himself: “Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see it? If not, why not? … If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood, make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?” ![]() What the beautiful is is another question.” The dialectic continues with his friend Lynch who declares that he once, “wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of Praxiteles in the Museum”. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. “Y ou are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce’s alter ego questioning the nature of artistic existence, and in conversation with a priest, the Dean of Studies, he is asked, as an artist, if he can define beauty. ![]() ![]() An act of graffiti on the backside of Praxiteles’ Knidian Aphrodite, is part of a dialogue on the subject of the philosophy of aestheticism, and the idea of beauty and value in art. ![]()
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