Torgeir,
What you describe isn’t so very different from what I was faced with in the
base library at 29 Palms back in 1953 as I concluded that being in the Marine
Corps during a war was all very well and good, but I didn’t want to make a
career of it. I therefore needed to decide upon a future involving something
else. I was entitled to the G.I. Bill. The next decision required that I pick
a course of study. I was coming from a personal history of not trusting my
teachers, of suspecting that I was brighter than they were, and that therefore
I was going to have to do some study and figure the world out on my own – or
rather “on my own” with the help of all I read. I can’t now recall all that I
read, but I did subscribe to Walter J. Black’s “Classics Club” and began
receiving a volume every few days (I still haven’t forgiven a sergeant who
borrowed my edition of Shakespeare and was subsequently arrested for exposing
himself in town. He along with his possessions and my volume of Shakespeare
were shipped off, I assumed, to a military prison.) Perhaps it was during
reading these volumes that I decided I wanted a classical education. Looking
about at the academic world I concluded that wasn’t possible – at least not in
the classical sense. However, I learned that by having an English major in
college, I could approach the classical ideal more closely than I could with
any other major; so that is what I did.
What are the classics? Walter J. Black certainly had his opinion. Later on I
began accumulating other versions of the classics, especially the originals if
the “classic” happened to be in English. Harold Bloom is very outspoken about
the Classics and his book Shakespeare, the invention of the Human exemplifies
the value of reading and being familiar with the classics. On the other hand,
if Harold Bloom is correct, then it probably doesn’t make any difference what
current academic theories impose alternate poets to study. This is what homo
sapiens has been doing for all recorded history; that is, rejecting the
teachings and ideas of their predecessors and insisting that current ideas were
superior and should supplant them. Historians are making a nice living
recording this process. But, modern innovators should be warned. If they are
wrong, future historians will find them out and expose their foolishness.
What does one do with a pseudo-classical education in 1959? Teaching seemed
the obvious choice; although when I was giving the introductory lectures to new
shooters at 29 palms, my fellow coaches thought I should become a lawyer. The
decision of what I was to do with my life was taken out of my hands by the
Bliss Employment agency who sent me to Douglas Aircraft Company which needed
someone smart enough to understand engineering and clever enough to convert
engineering proposals being sent to the air force into readable English. That
seemed demeaning given my original grandiose intention, and I didn’t
immediately accept a life in Engineering. The academic alternative which would
have involved finishing my MA, and getting a PhD by taking night courses.
There were major universities within easy driving distance; so all I needed was
the will.
That “will” was severely compromised by my first wife who thought I should try
harder and make more money when I was already making more than I would be able
to if I completed my MA and began work at a community college. But the final
straw was when I got into an argument with Dr. Erickson about the worth of
Alexander Pope. He believed Pope to be among the top five poets to have
written in the English language. I thought Pope’s poetry clever, but it didn’t
conform to my idea of poetry.
I was also younger than William York Tindall who I suspect would have placed
Dylan Thomas among the five best poets to have written in English. I suspect
he would have demoted Alexander Pope much as I did. On the other hand, I have
already lived long enough to have demoted many of the poets I once thought were
great.
Assuming I am right, what does this mean for poets writing today? Three or
four years ago I decided to become more familiar with current poets and used
Helen Vendler as my source. I bought books by several of the poets she thought
very good. I discovered that I, on the other hand, did not. These poets are
now in a box destined for the Salvation Army.
I suppose I have done too much reading to ever desire to become a “famous”
poet. I lost interest in that perhaps about the time I discovered it was
virtually impossible for an ordinary person to read Chaucer in the original. I
thought it important to read him. I read him in a Classics Club translation,
but I next needed to read him in the original. If that was too difficult or if
I failed to find the time to do it, that suggested that “fame” expired in about
700 years. And maybe “fame” doesn’t last even that long. Shakespeare is
difficult to read readily, by most of us, without textual notes and a glossary.
Poets I read and appreciated, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton among
others, killed themselves over matters of, to some extent, fame. Hart Crane,
whom I tried to appreciate, did it off the stern of a ship at sea. “No, No,” I
would have cautioned “fame as a poet changes with the language. The young say
things in words different from those used by the old. That is how long poetic
fame lasts. Go dig in your gardens. Go hiking. Take up photography. Get a
dog. Work out. You’ll feel better and you won’t care nearly as much about
ephemeral fame.”
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Torgeir Fjeld
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2019 4:06 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] The State of High C (was Re: J. Alfred Prufrock
explications)
Dear listers,
Regarding the position of canonised works, such as those of the authors you
mention, it is worth considering how academic studies of literature -- notably
English programmes here, there, and everywhere -- have gradually retreated from
the so-called big C-approach, viz. teaching Culture in order to Cultivate.
Therefore, we might ask what *is* the status of High C today?
To put it differently, could High C do without the state? Take, e.g., the
canonisation of Shakespeare in the 19th Century and the relation it had to the
strengthening of academic, humanistic/liberal arts programmes at that time.
Recall that this was *prior* to the rise of the disciplines, so that
philosophy, English, and so on, could still relatively unproblematically refer
to knowledge that was absolute and grounded in some transcendental domain.
This clearly isn't the case today, resulting in language programmes'
increasing orientation towards marketable skills, etc. What then with the
literature portion -- what is its future?
It seems from this vantage point that the crusade to de-canonise literature
departments in the 1980s and 90s was misguided; particularly what was
considered the "radical critique" of the canon, namely that there wasn't
(shouldn't be) one was self-defeating and unsustainable, so that mostly we saw
implemented a more "liberal" critique: changing the order and content of the
canon, while retaining the concept *as such*.
It seems today we're grappling with two effects of this debate:
1. The canon has survived, in somewhat altered form, both on literature
curricula and in the popular media (the ten best crime fiction of the year, and
what have you);
2. The canon in its High C form has survived, but not as a part of the State.
We sometimes hear of random, disconnected attempts at resuscitating the old
High C also in State curricula; however, it seems such attempts are mostly
doomed (and what would be the point?). This is where we agree, Lawrence: these
authors are interesting *in so far as we find their works interesting*. This
might seem obvious, but as you aptly note, the assumption that they are the
"best" products of our literary tradition should be challenged and grounded (if
they indeed are) again and again.
Reading an interesting Norwegian poet, Jon Fosse, at the moment: will try to
return with more about him soon.Take care. -tor
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld
https://torgeirfjeld.com/
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On Sun, 30 Jun 2019 at 21:50, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
A common explication, an explication I would call banal, sees The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock as a character depiction of a man who lacks self-confidence,
who dithers, and can’t make up his mind. As the poem proceeds Prufrock sinks
lower and lower until he like a crab with ragged claws is at the bottom where
he hears mermaids singing, but not singing to him. The voices he complained
about earlier in the poem then wake him, get him caught up in their concerns,
and he drowns.
I see the poem differently. T. S. Eliot knew (he wrote the poem at, I think,
age 27) that he had it in him to be Prufrock, and that is what he became, but
not totally. He knew what it was to be inspired during his writing of his
poetry – the mermaids singing. And his early successes made him an instant
success with the English literati. So should he have set his social and
literary successes aside and seek the mermaids? Or should he ignore them and
settle for the fame he had already achieved, something he valued greatly and
wished to enhance. He compromised by devoting himself to criticism, teaching
and publishing. None of which activities required his listening for mermaids.
Even though he has “heard the mermaids singing, each to each.” He does “not
think that they will sing” for him. And yet he has “lingered in the chambers
of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown” until “human
voices” woke him [with banal responsibilities] and he drowned.
What do critics do with a poet who produced relatively few poems but is still
(or they want him to be still a) major poet? Another such poet was Dylan
Thomas. In his introduction to A Reader’s guide to Dylan Thomas, William York
Tindall (in 1962) wrote,
“Thomas wrote sixteen great poems – give or take a couple. Few poets have
written so many. If I were making an anthology of the hundred best lyrics in
English, I should include two or three by Thomas along with half a dozen or
more by Yeats. To those who want to know which sixteen of Thomas’ poems I have
in mind I offer a list of seventeen: “I see the boys of summer,” “The force
that through the green fuse,” “Especially when the October wind,” “Today, this
insect,” “Hold hard, these ancient minutes,” Altarwise by owl-light,” “We lying
by seasand,” “After the funeral,” “A Refusal to Mourn,” “Poem in October,”
“Ceremony After a Fire Raid,” “Ballad of the Long-legged Bait,” “Fern Hill,”
“In Country Sleep,” “Over Sir John’s hill,” “Lament,” “In the White Giant’s
Thigh.”
Tindall goes on to justify his choice: “Value judgments of this sort,
notoriously subjective, and uncertain, are not unlike the reports of a
winetaster, which depend upon experience in tasting. Saying that Thomas wrote
sixteen great poems means that, having read his poems again and again and
having read many others through the years, I find these sixteen agreeable. . .
.”
Agreeable though they may be, my impression is that Thomas’s reputation as a
poet is not faring well. He was a “rock star” in his age. That is, he had a
beautiful reading voice. He did outrageous things. He spoke his mind
regardless of the cost, and was a drunkard and womanizer. He was an
interesting personality to a great number of people . But do many read his
poetry today? Maybe in Wales, but they aren’t totally reconciled to his having
written in English.
In T. S. Eliot’s case many still do read his poetry. I just reread The Love
Song of J. Alfred Profrock” and found it . . . agreeable.
Lawrence
