[lit-ideas] Re: Clarity in Poetry
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 22:18:19 +0100 (BST)
<Eric: Yes, you've got it. I am advancing a type of
aesthetic
essentialism. Sometimes redundancy and diffuseness is
the most clear
path to the desired poetic effect.>
I am prepared to concede the possibility they might be the
_best_ path to the desired effect; it is not so clear to me
why this would mean they are the clearest path if clearest means
something other than best. If it merely means best we ought maybe best drop
the reference to clarity as not contributing to clarity.
<Depends on the
poem. You would
not expect these effects from a haiku, but you might
from something
by Wallace Stevens. Poems are integrative in a way
that totally
binds: take out a line of a successful sonnet and you
kill the
sonnet; take out a line of a sports journalist report
and you get a
typo. They are different worlds with different rules.>
It seems to me this last sentence may be intimating that
these "different worlds with different rules" reflect
_essential_ differences between different types/forms
of writing. The problem is how seriously we take such a
claim and to what extent we attempt to build an 'aesthetic'
out of it. For example, there may be rules attached to different forms
so that in the light of these rules we may be able to say:
that is a limerick, this is a haiku, over there is a sonnet,next to it
a piece of prose. Some of these rules might be mutually exclusive and easy to
apply: for example, if a limerick must have five lines and a haiku three, we
can perhaps conclude of a four line verse that it is neither limerick nor
haiku. But is this a matter of some essence of the form or more an upshot
of some conventions about a type of writing? Can't we imagine a four line
verse
say, 'There was a young man from Vienna/Whose hair was covered in henna/He
went to
his mum/And asked her 'How come?''.
Can't we say this is very similar to a limerick except it lacks a last line
that end-rhymes with the first two? Would someone be right
to say it is nothing like a limerick at all because it lacks the five line
structure that is of the very essence of a limerick and therefore it is a
completely different form or type of thing? What would they be _right_ about?
An essence of limerick and essential differences between this form and
another? What would be the importance of what they are saying? And what
'aesthetic' could we derive from what they say?
Imagine cases where the 'rules' between forms are not so obviously mutually
exclusive.
Say between prose and poetry. Even if we could agree clear cases of poetry
and prose,we might find borderline cases that are hard to classify. Is there
an 'essence' here to help us? Would it really matter to evaluating the
aesthetic worth of a borderline case whether we say it is prose, poetry or
even prose-poetry? That is, would its worth really depend on classifying its
form correctly? Even if there was an _essence_ of forms (as opposed to
conventions as to forms) that would not necessarily show
that there were any important aesthetic conclusions to be drawn from this.
What may be true, but does not require an essentialism as to forms, is that
certain aesthetic consequences follow from the limitations of a [chosen]
form.
Say the typical limitation of the blues form of music was that it was based
on just three chords, 4/4 rhythm etc. We might admire a blues track because
of what it achieves despite the limitations of this form, of what it achieves
within those [self-imposed] limits;
even admire it because of how it plays within the typical [as opposed to
essential] form - say, by adding more chords or deviating from 4/4 rhythm.
Given the limitations
of the form certain criticisms made of an object composed within that form
would not so much be criticisms of the aesthetic worth of that object given
the form adopted but criticisms of the limitations of the
form eg. if we said something was a poor blues song because
it only had three chords and a 4/4 rhythm we would not be attacking the worth
of that song in comparison with others within the same form, we would be
attacking the aesthetic limitations of the form. Some people feel this way
about certain forms of art, to the extent that they may be unwilling to say
they are art forms [eg. blues music, jazz, pop art].
But the converse is that we might appreciate a blues song as a brilliant
example of that form of art because of what it achieves despite the form's
limitations, just as we might say of two paintings, made under the limitation
that only primary colours could be used,
that one was much better than another. One song or painting showed what could
be achieved within this form was much greater than the other showed - and in
this sense it _exemplified_ that form.
But all we mean by this is that it was an exemplary example of that form - we
are not at all bound to conclude that it somehow reflects the _essence_ of
that form.
It may be that the feeling that something is the perfect exemplification of a
form of art is what inclines us to an essentialism of forms, but there are
other options than essentialism.
Another of the reasons that inclines us to essentialism is the feeling there
must be some kind of ultimate explanation or reason that grounds the
appparent perfection of a work of art, but there are other options - one is
that all knowledge, whether in science or in the arts, is
conjectural and suspectible of further explanation.
I had referred to Popper's World 3 theory. Plato had a theory of World 3 and
it was an essentialistic one: the World 3 objects were the permanent
unchanging ideal forms of which the material World 1 was just a changing
reflection. Popper's theory is non- or even anti-essentialistic. This
indicates that essentialism is one issue and the distinction between a W1, W2
and W3 is another issue. It appears that Eric
is not only offering a kind of essentialism but thinks this essentialism
"dissolves" the distinction between the three worlds....or perhaps below he
is saying instead that "aesthetic
meaning" dissolves the boundaries between the different essential forms?
Either way I am unclear I agree with his position or fully understand it.
<Eric: Aesthetic meaning dissolves the boundaries
between these
worlds, and in fact this process has been the subject
of many poems.>
The fact this _alleged_ process has been subject of many poems is no
argument in its favour - no more than the many ghost stories favour the
existence of ghosts. Nor, as indicated, is it crystal clear what it means to
say "Aesthetic meaning dissolves the boundaries between these worlds". Er,
what?
<Aesthetic meaning is not just content, but also the
form of the
work, the way it is produced or performed, the entire
context in
which it is received--the total experience from soup
to nuts.>
I think this is a red herring. We can of course distinguish the form and the
content of an object, and for certain purposes this may be useful. But there
is a wider use of content where this includes the form of an object, and this
is the sense of 'content' as I was using the term. When we play a recording,
look at a statue, read a poem etc. the total content
we engage with includes the form in which it is expressed. The _total_
content of an object includes the form of that object eg. the total content
of the recording 'Blind Willie McTell' includes the blues form
of which it is an expression or variant. (Note: the recording of 'Blind
Willie McTell' is a W3 object, as well as being an embodiment of the song
which is also a W3 object - the object of which the recording is an
interpretation or version; we may make this distinction because while the
recording includes the blues form, the song may be written so it is open as
to the style in which it is to be played and which therefore need not include
the blues form as part of its content).
My point was that "aesthetic meaning" may not necessarily be conceived
as, or given by, the _total_ content of the object but may be conceived as
involving _an interaction_ between the W3 object and our W2 grasp of its
content and the content of other W3 objects and our grasp of them.
<As for different performances of a work of art, they
become the work
of art.>
They become perhaps W3 objects or works of art in themselves. But they do not
exhaust the content of the W3 object of which they are versions, performances
etc. and in this sense they _do not_
become that work of art since they are a separate entity.
<The best performers of music, for example, try
to bring out
the composer and do not merely exploit their
relationship to their
instrument. People can speak well of "Schnabel's
Beethoven," not
because it brings out Schnabel, but because Schnabel
brought out
more Beethoven.>
Perhaps in the sense that he brought out _more of the content of Beethoven's
music_ rather than brought out Schnabel's personality. But equally, unless
we take the content of Beethoven's music to be _merely_ the expression of
Beethoven and his personality (which it is not), what Schnabel brings out is
not Beethoven either or his personality so much as the content or properties
of Beethoven's music. There are examples where in the opinion of some critics
the fault of some performance of a work is that the interpretation is too
much a product of the personality of the performer [however striking that
personality may be] to the detriment of 'bringing out' the content
of the work [Peter O'Toole once did a drunken over-the-top 'MacBeth' that was
a great theatrical spectacle but which few critics thought a particularly
deep or worthwhile performance in terms of bringing out what was deep and
worthwhile about the play; Glenn Gould's 1950's 'Goldberg Variations' have
been similarly criticised for idiosyncrasises that obscure rather than reveal
the value of the music - and certainly a Liberace version of those variations
might be similarly criticised].
But conversely it might be a fault of an interpretation that it too closely
reflects the personality of the creator: eg. say Satie was by many accounts a
selfish bad-tempered obnoxious drunk, would an
interpretation of his music that tried to reflect that personality be better
than one that brought out its gentle, calm, beautiful qualities?
<Donal: So what is the point of suggesting that the
content of ... a
poem or a symphony, is the "most clear, concise,
thorough
expression" of that object?
Eric: The point is to assert that something like Hart
Crane's
"Atlantis" could not be more clearly expressed by any
other
formulation that was still "Atlantis." Again, we might
have to go
back to the word "clear" and see what can be said
about it. In poems
we're dealing with a kind of heightened language that
redefines what
is meant by "clear," something more powerful than, and
resistant to,
analysis.>
I think I did suggest Eric was indeed defining "clear" in a somewhat unusual
way.
Whether this is really a result of the (essence of) poetry necessitating such
a redefinition of "clear" and whether this concept really is "more powerful
than, and resistant to, analysis" is to me still unclear. Though hard to make
fully clear, a W123 analysis of the meaning/value of art seems to me more
promising than this kind of aesthetic essentialism,
however more powerful than analysis it may appear to be.
Best,
Donal
England
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