Eric,
My hearing is fairly poor so I couldnt make out the words in the YouTube
video; so I gave up in the midst of scenes from Hedy Lamarrs Ecstasy. I
did enjoy not so very long ago, Helen Vendlers comments on Wallace Stevens.
After those I ordered several Helen Vendler books, and she has never
disappointed.
At one time I spent a lot of time reading Yeats poetry and reading some
biographies as well. I had read Blavatskys The Secret Doctrine, and some
works on Hindu philosophy in the past and so understood most of the esoteric
language Yeats used, but despite believing he was the best poet of the age,
I quit reading him, as well as reading about him. Earlier I made a similar
decision about Blake. You cant really study Blake without immersing
yourself in his esoteric opinions. Yeats at least borrowed other
spiritualistic teachers opinions, but Blake invented his own.
You might say that Stevens invented his ideas which isnt quite the same
thing, since all legitimate poets do something like that, but he did it with
more authority; so it some point one needs to decide whether to accept his
views, and I eventually decided I didnt. Can one read a poet or novelist
when one loses the ability to suspend disbelief? Maybe if one is still in
school, but after one is out, what is the point?
There is probably too much esotericism in them for most of us to follow a
continuous reading of such a poem as Toward a Supreme Fiction even if one
has younger ears and can hear the words. And while poems were intended to
be read or sung in the days of the Provencal (or Occitanian, as Strayer
writes in The Albigensian Crusades Provencal being but one small region in
the areas were the Occitanian language was spoken) poetry. But at some
point poetry became too abstract to benefit from being read aloud despite
poets (and others) continuing to do it but maybe that is just an
unwarranted negative opinion based on the fact that I dont hear as well as
I used to.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Eric Yost
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2018 2:33 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Some words to and from W. B. Yeats, on his 153d
birthday
As a cure for those pessimist lyrics, I recommend Wallace Stevens's
masterpiece "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," a sort of manual for the young
warrior of life. Here's a decent reading of the poem. The video sometimes
adds, sometimes detracts from the poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6ZcqgnC4L0
Eric
On 6/14/2018 1:59 AM, Lawrence Helm wrote:
Yeats was the favorite poet of a friend who when laid off from McDonnell
Douglas, borrowed some money in order to make a trip to (I think) Kansas
where he was to become the editor of a newspaper there. I liked Yeats
poetry but maybe not as much as he did. On the other hand, maybe I read it
more carefully than he did. But it has always seemed a mistake to leave the
poetry and enter into one of the biographies about him. He was a nutter.
Sailing to Byzantium is, I believe, one of his best poems. In order to
truly appreciate his poetry at a critical level, one would need to immerse
oneself in his spiritualistic beliefs: the séances, the gyres of history
not to the extent one would have to go to accomplish an equivalent thing
with Blakes poetry, but on that order. And I never thought it was worth
for either one.
But Sailing to Byzantium is a good poem. Yeats was 62 when he wrote it
older than T.S. Eliot who was 29 when he wrote in The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock, I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the
bottoms of my trousers rolled. Robert is, if I remember right, about two
years older than I am which would make him about 86. Ive thought about the
lines from Prufrock recently. I seem not to be as tall as I used to be, and
I find that unless I roll the bottoms of my trousers they become tattered
from my stepping on them.
Yeats wrote his poem ten years after Eliot wrote Prufrock. A person feeling
old might feel with Byzantium that any place one happens to live is no
country for old men.
But in the beginning of stanza II Yeats writes, An aged man is but a paltry
thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Soul clap its hands and sing
. . . Which is what Yeats was still doing at age 62 which used to seem a
very old age to me.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2018 9:49 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Some words to and from W. B. Yeats, on his 153d
birthday
BTW, this might be of interest to those who still believe that Literature
arises from context:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/books/i-hear-you-knocking.html
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
