[lit-ideas] Re: SUNDAY POEM
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:16:54 EST
Oh, Mike, you must read Balzac.... one thing, anything of his.
(Oh, and Lawrence -- you're exhibiting signs of humour AND
stream-of-consciousness -- an unexpected and welcome development!).
Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: SUNDAY POEM
Date: 1/15/2007 5:47:07 P.M. Central Standard Time From: _atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Good post, Eric, except that it's wrong. Well, not wrong, really, just not
quite right. And what makes it not quite right is that you intimate that
poets shouldn't preach. Well, throw out half the Canon why don't you?
Oops, sorry, Dante, you don't make the cut. Milton, hit the road, Bub.
Emerson, Thoreau, Kipling, sorry. Blake, can't use you, Babe, too
political. And on and on. I do agree with you about Chaucer and
Shakespeare (Balzac, I've never read) -- except that both C and S quite
willing paid homage to the pieties of their time as was thought ought to be
the role of an artist, so it's not like they were epitome's of literary
disinterestedness. Me? I have no problem with a poet, a painter, a
preacher or professor evangelizing. It's not what they say, it's how they
say it. Who among all those you know who've contributed anything of lasting
importance to our human culture was not evangelizing? As Auden says:
"Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well."
Transtromer may well have been enlisting a narrative other (ah, but doesn't
that kind of talk take me back to the old classroom), but who cares? Did he
get your hackles up? Apparently, but apparently not in the same direction
as mine. Yes, of course, he was calling those whom he despises:
"greed-driven, murderous pigs not able to appreciate Schubert" -- and why
shouldn't he as long as he does so artistically. It's all about Art, man,
don't you get it? And Art in this instance is his spitting in all their
faces to put out the fire of his hatred. How well did he spit? Now if
you're of a moralistic bent, you'll probably ask yourself: should he hate
them? I don't know that. That's his business. But I sure do feel his de
profundis fury -- and I know what he knows: that there's nothing you can
do about any of it. The only salvation is to sink deeper into solipsistic
aestheticism until they can't find you. Or to take up arms and by opposing,
become them.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Yost" <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 12:15 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: SUNDAY POEM
> Mike kindly sends along a poem by Transtromer:
>
>
> Annie said: "This music is so heroic," and she is right.
> But those who glance enviously at men of action, people who despise
> themselves inside for not being murderers, do not find themselves in this
> music.
> And the people who buy and sell others, and who believe that everyone can
> be bought, don't find themselves here.
> Not their music.
>
>
>
> Schubert also has the most delightfully childish lyricism. Listen to the
> final movement Rondo from Piano Sonata #17 in D-major. Clockwork children
> at play ... with occasional big-chord interruption by their parents. Or
> try the Cambridge Buskers' (or the old Josef Hoffmann acoustic) recording
> of Schubert's March Militaire. Children in the empyrean.
>
> There should be more Schubert played over the loudspeakers at Guantanamo,
> during interrogations, and of course, in jet cockpits during missile
> strikes on al-Qaeda.
>
> But I digress.
>
> Ever notice how some naive poets and writers struggle to put down people
> of action and people of commerce? They are denying a part of their own
> natures. The writer who always puts down "greedy, narrow-minded
> businessmen" is really lashing that part of herself who is a "greedy,
> narrow-minded businessperson." All blame rests with the self, as Epictetus
> observed, and people who go out of their way to deny any of the human
> types is probably to a certain extent involved in repression and
> self-hatred.
>
> Transtromer's strategy here is to enlist a narrative other, with whom he
> can agree that business and military types are terrible. Those bad guys
> can't appreciate Schubert. The poet and his other, though, can enjoy the
> elevation that comes from putting the other types down.
>
> Not so artists like Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Balzac ... who enlist all of
> humanity in their description and let each speak for themselves.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
