The Small Marvellous

Old discussions stretch out and intervene in recent discussions. In a couple of passages of our (transcribed and published) extensive discussion "On the Marvellous" 1998 (in Lucifer 2000, in the original swedish of course), there emerged a distinction between "The Marvellous with a capital M" and another, less grandiose phenomenon; the distinction could perhaps be described as on the one hand, "convulsive things" "which are usually being talked about in surrealism", and on the other hand an everyday overcoming presence. The latter, the "small marvellous", which might coincide with "exteriority", was first brought up by Carl-Michael Edenborg:

Carl-Michael Edenborg: I'm going by bicycle to and from work, some parts of the forest when biking through, there comes a scent or a the sensation of the marvellous where it is like coming to one's senses somewhere and feeling some kind of presence in the world.
Mattias Forshage: Indeed, sensory presence.
Carl-Michael Thereby also a kind of magic experience in a way then. The marvellous was there and for me that is every day, but I am trying, when I am talking about the marvellous, then it is, the Marvellous with a capital M, that is, these convulsive events.

After having established the distinction between the big and the small marvellous, several participants express their doubt as to how interesting it is to speak about the small marvellous:

Riyota Kasamatsu: For me these small marvellous events, they feel, the marvellous is somehow more subversive than that. Not just small things happening. That is small everyday experiences, you may think it would be nice if there were more of them, but these big, big things, you don't get that often, and the desire to get them is very subversive.

Or:

Niklas Nenzén: One runs the risk of inventoring one's life for other things that perhaps would be better described as comfort, or wellbeing.
Jonas Enander: So is that the marvellous?
Niklas: No I mean one may be concocting all the things in life that makes one feel at home on this planet, in spite of everything.

Further comments to the same problematic:

Bruno Jacobs: Yes it is unconscious stuff, it is quite possible, but it is maybe just a, in that case it is a wish that, the pleasure principle almost partly. Partly the pleasure principle indeed, the lack of conflict and it creates, there emerges a zone, where things simply are. Calm rather than stormy.
Niklas: That's good.
Bruno: And not only that, but in the first place that like, a harmony perhaps some kind of what, a small zone.
Johannes Bergmark: Not stormy?
Bruno: No.
Jonas: Is stormy then a word for describing...
Bruno: It could be a stormy environment, a stormy period, but specifically the marvellous comes into existence when it emerges a stillness like in the middle of all that.
Niklas: So should we take the next question?
Jonas: Are you a classicist?

And:

Mattias: Of course I prefer, from the viewpoint of life quality, those periods with more frequent experiences of the marvellous before those periods with less frequent experiences of the marvellous.
Niklas: Goodday axehandle.