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The purpose of this website is to counter lies about Aesthetic Realism, which have been put forth on the Internet by a few individuals. As everyone knows, there's a great deal of lying, including in cyberspace, at the present time; and these are as deep-dyed falsehoods as we have seen anywhere. They've appeared chiefly on the web pages of two persons. They’re an attempt to tarnish and discredit the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, its founder, the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel, and every person who has shown respect for this knowledge and for him.To learn what the wide, cultural, kind education of Aesthetic Realism is, and the many different ways it can be studied, visit the website of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation: AestheticRealism.org. The method of those attacking it is to create lies so numerous and massive that a reader would feel, “There must be something to this.” It’s the “Big Lie” approach, which has been around often in history. Most of that falsification is being purveyed on the web pages of a Michael Bluejay. He is someone who, on his personal website, has published naked pictures of himself—including photos of himself in full frontal nudity, and riding a tricycle naked. Then there are the utterances of Adam Mali. For the last decade, he and his mother, Ellen Mali, have worked hard trying to hurt Aesthetic Realism and also trying to get others to join them. She was for a time a director of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, but became exceedingly angry when people objected to her desire to turn this not-for-profit educational foundation into a personal fiefdom (many details can be given). Neither she nor her son liked it that Aesthetic Realism is large education—a philosophy that shows the relation of all the arts and sciences to the self of everyone: they wanted to water down its principles to suit themselves and change a cultural institution into something that would serve them. They were furious when they weren’t permitted to do so. About the Writers on Our WebsiteThe statements that will be appearing on this Friends of Aesthetic Realism website are by people who have looked closely at Aesthetic Realism. They live in different parts of America and the world. They are (for example) educators, parents, computer specialists, artists, doctors, musicians, architects, business persons, labor leaders. The writers are in different relations to Aesthetic Realism: Some teach it or are studying to do so. Some have taken courses in the diverse curriculum offered at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Some attend public seminars and dramatic events at the Foundation occasionally; some often; some rarely. Some study in individual consultations, including by telephone from various parts of the country and abroad. Some studied Aesthetic Realism in the past. We’ve started this website because, even though dishonesty on the internet is frequent, we hate the lies about Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel that have been put forth there. On the one hand, they’re so ridiculous they’re not worth commenting on at all. But on the other, we want to tell the true story. We want people to know what Aesthetic Realism really is and not be misled by an effort to hurt it, an effort by persons bent on revenge because they take the ethics of Aesthetic Realism as an affront to their egos. |
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The individual statements will say more, too, about the motives behind the lies. But for now we’ll quote this from the Aesthetic Realism Foundation’s website, because we agree with it:
The Liars’ Purpose and Technique The purpose of the liars is to stop people from wanting to learn about Aesthetic Realism—from attending, say, a dramatic presentation about Shakespeare’s Othello at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, or a public seminar like the recent one titled “Classic Mistakes in Marriage & How Not to Make Them.” And their purpose is to have you feel that if you like Aesthetic Realism (as it is so beautifully easy to do), if you have a high opinion of it (as a person with a careful mind will), it’s because you’ve been somehow taken in. So they use the scare-word of our time: cult. Everybody knows that if you give people the idea something is a cult, they won’t come near it. The technique of the liars is: 1) they find out what characteristics a cult is supposed to have; 2) then they say Aesthetic Realism has them (though of course it doesn’t). Also, since there are so-called “cult experts” who have a stake, including financial, in the existence of cults—if you tell one of them that Aesthetic Realism has those characteristics, he’ll then tell you, anyone you send to him, anyone who asks him, including a press person, that Aesthetic Realism is a cult. This kind of fakery is called in journalism “circular sourcing.” The lies on the web pages referred to go all the way from the pip that somehow Aesthetic Realism is against higher education (despite the fact that persons with graduate degrees, and persons who attend college, and college teachers study it!); to the disinformation about Eli Siegel’s death; to a repulsively false picture of what it means to study Aesthetic Realism—with a wide array of fabrications in between. Before we comment on them, we're going to quote ten statements by some eminent people, where Eli Siegel and his work are described truly. A True Description 1) There is William Carlos Williams, one of America’s most famous poets, who wrote this about Eli Siegel’s poem “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana”:
Williams says that the way of seeing in Mr. Siegel’s poems makes for
2) There is Kenneth Rexroth, who wrote, for instance, in the New York Times Book Review:
3) There is Martin O’Malley, former Mayor of Baltimore, now Governor of Maryland, who wrote of Eli Siegel in 2002:
4) There is Selden Rodman, who wrote in the Saturday Review about Mr. Siegel:
5) There is Hugh Kenner, who, in Poetry magazine, wrote that the literary criticism in Mr. Siegel’s book on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw
6) And art historian Meyer Schapiro, who wrote:
7) And author Walter Leuba, who said so eloquently of Mr. Siegel as writer and person:
8) There is Donald Kirkley, writer for the Baltimore Sun, who knew Mr. Siegel as early as the 1920s. In this passage from a 1944 article, Kirkley is writing about Mr. Siegel at the time he won the Nation Poetry Prize, in 1925:
9) There is Huntington Cairns, who was Secretary of the National Gallery, and said:
10) And there is Elijah E. Cummings, who is Immediate Past Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and who, in his lengthy Congressional Tribute to Mr. Siegel, said:
So we begin.
for Friends of Aesthetic Realism
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