Juan Diego Marroquin, “The Contradiction of Ayn Rand’s Romantic Realism” Outside reading #3, entry 13

The title itself seems absurd. Rand believed art’s proper role ought to be representational yet ideal. It should portray life as it “could and should be”. Of course, for me, this is silly. If you seek to be real, you cannot seek to be ideal. These are two contradictory ideas. In class we’ve hinted at ideas like Hegel’s synthesis and other forms of understanding beauty that hint at the possibility of merging two contradictions to form greater understanding. But in this respect it seems hard to impose both standards upon each other and it simply cannot be done.