I think that the point about the Bloomsbury crowd is that for the most part they were actually trying to find a way to behave decently without God or conventional morals, rather than that they were careless libertines.
I don't entirely agree with your assessment of them, either. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were very minor painters, it is true, but they and Fry helped create an understanding of far better ones. Strachey was a definite minor talent who singlehandedly rewrote, for good or ill, the concept of what it is to be a biographer. Keynes - I would argue that he was a significant prose stylist apart from being one of the most important economists ever. Lopokova was a great dancer - though I don't know whether she counts as part of the group. The Nicholsons were a waste of space in many ways, I'll give you that, but again, they are pretty marginal to the Group as such. And if you are allowed them, you have to include Russell, Eliot and Hope Mirlees...
Eliot was not much for screwing around, as far as we know, but was a shit. Mozart was a horndog, but seems to have done little harm to himself or the women he slept with, because he stuck to women who, like his wife and her sisters, were players in their own right.
I'd argue that the significant question is always the consequences of what people did and do - great artists seem as split as the rest of the human race on that one.
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timeasmymeasure
Bloomsburies...
Date: 2005-11-30 03:55 am (UTC)I don't entirely agree with your assessment of them, either. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were very minor painters, it is true, but they and Fry helped create an understanding of far better ones. Strachey was a definite minor talent who singlehandedly rewrote, for good or ill, the concept of what it is to be a biographer. Keynes - I would argue that he was a significant prose stylist apart from being one of the most important economists ever. Lopokova was a great dancer - though I don't know whether she counts as part of the group. The Nicholsons were a waste of space in many ways, I'll give you that, but again, they are pretty marginal to the Group as such. And if you are allowed them, you have to include Russell, Eliot and Hope Mirlees...
Eliot was not much for screwing around, as far as we know, but was a shit. Mozart was a horndog, but seems to have done little harm to himself or the women he slept with, because he stuck to women who, like his wife and her sisters, were players in their own right.
I'd argue that the significant question is always the consequences of what people did and do - great artists seem as split as the rest of the human race on that one.