Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:
This issue of TRO, “A World That Has Meaning!” is thrilling, important, and needed by people right now. What are we—what is everyone—most hoping for as 2023 is soon to begin? Is it to see that other things and the world itself have fresh and authentic value? Yes! But what in us interferes with our seeing meaning? Included in this TRO is a poem by Eli Siegel–about a winter happening–that will surprise and move you. You will love “A World That Has Meaning!,” the 2099th issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:
Dear Unknown Friends:
Here is part 4 of Is Hope Worth Money?, a definitive, very lively, deep, surprising, kind 1969 lecture by Eli Siegel. It’s about those huge matters in people’s lives, fact, value, and emotion. And behind the understanding in it is this Aesthetic Realism principle: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”
In the present section, Mr. Siegel comments on a poem of Matthew Arnold that describes two different possibilities about the world’s creation. One is that it arose from a purpose, from a plan; the second, that the world arose by chance. As we know, these two views have been much argued about over the years, sometimes fiercely. And Mr. Siegel, without “taking sides” here, shows that in either instance it is a world that has Meaning.
In relation to that tremendous and beautiful matter which is meaning, I wrote in our last issue about something that Aesthetic Realism explains and that people need—vitally—to understand. I’ll say a little more about it now….Read more