In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

SOBRIETY VS. EXUBERANCE 331
has begun to emerge. The new direction in education has thus given up
all specific content and tries to achieve the goal of sobriety merely
through its methods and work techniques ... The result is a turning
away from instructor-centered teaching and the inauguration of cooperative
and practice-oriented work habits. Both aspects mark the adoption
of a new sobriety in teaching." (Ehrentreich, 235). [see Individuality
vs. Collectivity]
In the opinion of both its partisans and its opponents, Sobriety is a
major element in the definition of the present. [see Present vs. Past] This
is why the concept hardly ever appears without the epithet "new."
Ornamentation thus becomes an object of aesthetic nostalgia, but is not
vigorously rejected as inimical to Sobriety. Walter Benjamin's description
of the Alcazar palace in Seville exemplifies this perspective: "A type of
architecture that follows the first impulse of fantasy. It is untroubled by
any practical considerations. Its spacious rooms are open only for
dreams and celebrations-that is, for the realization of dreams. Here,
dance and silence become the leitmotif because all human movement is
absorbed by the quiet unrest of the ornamentation" (Benjamin, 123).
[see Silence vs. Noise] Wherever one can afford to set aside practical
concerns, as is the case with music and dance, ornamentation no longer
seems antithetical to function and its purity may even converge with the
value of Sobriety: "For what strikes us in the 'pure' music of a Stravinsky,
a Prokofiev, a Poulenc, or an Auric, as much as in that of Mozart, is that
the tonal sequences, whose suggestive power elsewhere serves other ends,
are here emptied of their original meaning, as if deconcretized and presented
as simple ornamental formulas" (Coeuroy and Schaffner, 11-12).
If this reflection on musical ornament leads to the praise of jazz as a
form-oriented genre and thus to the recuperation of the ornament for
contemporary art, Federico Garcia Lorca's "Oda a Salvador Dali" describes
the way in which Surrealist painting secretly longs to discover
natural proportions:
A desire for forms and limits defeats us.
Here comes the man who sees with the yellow straightedge.
Venus is a white still-life
And the butterfly collectors flee ...
Hygienic soul, you live on new marble.