Steve Schwartz schrieb:

>The harm of Beethoven is that most people don't like the music.  It thus
>creates a schism between intellectuals and normal people.  This is bad.
>Intellectuals are bad.  Intellectuals are troublemakers.  Normal people
>are God's Gift.  Therefore, we really shouldn't have Beethoven.

It doesn't take Beethoven to create a schism between intellectuals and
normal people.  This schim will always be there.  And there will always be
intellectuals.  Like me.  Troublemakres, eh? I take this as a compliment.
(And the world would be much poorer without Beethoven, by the way.)

>Schoenberg isn't avant-garde.  But even if he were, so what? I have
>absolutely no interest in the avant-garde because it's avant-garde.

So you like the good old stuff - which once was avant-garde. See how
strange you argue?

>Of course I would, because Hafiz has influenced that tradition, especially
>in the late 19th century and in the 1960s and 1970s US.  The "deep image"
>school of American poetry came under Hafiz's (and Persian poetry in
>general) influence, just as the late 19th century and the Twenties were
>influenced by Japan.

That doesn't make Hafiz a Western guy. He remains Oriental.

Robert