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Similes in the Iliad: The Horrors of War

September 12, 2022

criticism, guest post, Igor Livramento, metaphor, reading, symbolism

Today’s post – “Similes in the Iliad: The Horrors of War” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

I know this must be one of the most common themes of all time. Any individual who is minimally literate and in possession of some literary culture knows that the Iliad is full of great similes.

Contrary to what it may seem at first glance, these artful chunks of language exhibit more than the eye can see: They establish Homer’s views on war in a manner that is surreptitiously under our noses. Through a game of hiding what is in plain sight, Homer criticizes the war at the same time that he seems only to report what is happening on the battlefield.

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Put Some Heart in your Writing

August 8, 2022

Writing

guest post, Igor Livramento, literature, writing

Today’s post – “Put Some Heart in Your Writing” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Despite the title, I am not talking about the organ that pumps blood through the body. It is a metaphor. I am talking about injecting blood in your text – again I commit a metaphor. It is about writing something captivating, moving, instigating. “Captivating” is another metaphor – a literary text is not a kidnapper to hold someone captive.

Although language brings these metaphors to which the metaphorical status we remain deaf (call this forgetting catachresis), do not think that writing literature is all about making clever metaphors.

heart writing — Putting some heart in your writing isn’t as simple as it might initially appear. It involves paradoxes and conflicts with much of what people (naively) call “writing”

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The Industrialization of the Arts: Meaning in a Capitalist Framework

November 1, 2021

Criticism, Society

art, capitalism, guest post, ignorance, Igor Livramento, society

Today’s post – “The Industrialization of the Arts: Meaning in a Capitalist Framework” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

The lack of exploration of style, and the absence of style development strikes me as a trait of the industrialization of the arts. The artist no longer has to make poetry, no longer has to open up worlds to be experienced in all their familiarity or strangeness; now the artist must only provoke intense subjective experiences one after another.

It is an impoverishment of art to the level of killing it and reducing it to the same criteria as plain entertainment. I call it the aestheticization of life. The whole life has been made the object of aesthetics.

industrialization of arts — The industrialization of the arts involves art-as-fetish

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