[lit-ideas] The Tragic Generation

From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lit-Ideas " <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 15:33:36 -0800
I have been reading Richard Tillinghast's Damaged Grandeur, Robert Lowell's
Life and Work.  I am 88/124 through his book.  Tillinghast does think Lowell
wonderful and tells his readers that in many ways, but I have yet to hear
how wonderful Lowell's poetry is demonstrated by the poetry itself.
Nevertheless the book is interesting and worth reading by anyone interested
in the poets of that generation.  Here is Tillinghast on Jarrell and
Berryman, both of whom committed suicide:

"What a distance we are from the high claims made by Randall Jarrell forty
years ago [Tillinghast published his book in 1995] in 'The Obscurity of the
Poet' from Poetry and the Age: 
        Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament
        and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because
        it is life itself.  From Christ to Freud we believed that, if we
know
        the truth , the truth will set us free: art is indispensable because
so 
        much of this truth can be learned through works of art and through
        works of art alone - for which of us could have learned from himself
        what Proust and Chekhov, Hardy and Yeats and Rilke, Shakespeare
        and Homer learned for us?
                . . . Human life without some form of poetry is not human 
        life but animal existence.

"That art teaches us about life is an idea seldom heard from poets now, and
never from exponents of 'critical theory.'  From reading texts, they say, we
only learn about other texts.

"The task, it seems to me, is to avoid the temptation toward despair and
self-destructiveness that so damaged the lives of the 'tragic' generation,
while at the same time taking seriously their dedication to the redemptive
value of poetry.  Lowell, in an elegiac tribute to Jarrell, used the word
'noble' to describe his old friend.  John Berryman had his own fierce
nobility, which he characteristically hid under self-satire.

"His single-minded obsession with poetry, his gift for transforming his own
brilliance and his own pain into art - these enabled him to leave behind a
tortured but strangely sublime and moving testament.

        Henry's pelt was put on sundry walls
        where it did much resemble Henry and
        them persons was delighted.
        Especially his long & glowing tail
        by all them was admired, and visitors.
        They whistled: This is it!

        Golden, whilst your frozen daiquiris
        whir at midnight, gleams on you his fur
        & silky & black.
        Mission accomplished, pal.

Comment:   In regard to Tillinghast's comment about the critics in 1995,
"reading texts, they say, we only learn about other texts," I thought of
Harold Bloom.  Someplace else I read recently that for Bloom the most
significant aspect to poetry is the influence between a poet and the once
influenced rather than the poetry of either - something like that - a rather
serious condemnation.  But writing about poetry seems difficult.  I don't
think Tillinghast has been of good service to Lowell as far as I've read.
Tillinghast was under a severe restraint in that he had only 124 or so pages
to write his comments, but even after turning often to Bidart and Gewanter
edition of Robert Lowell, Collected Poems to see what Tillinghast was
referring to, I wasn't finding beauty.  Tillinghast seemed content to show
that earlier readings missed Lowell's points and that Lowell was more
serious and profound than previously thought.

The quote of Jarrell's is interesting and after reading it I ordered Poetry
and the Age.  I used to have some books by and about Jarrell but seem to
have gotten rid of them.  I don't think I ever read this one.  Tillinghast
is saying no one thinks this way today.  We don't go to poetry for truth.
Today we are clear about this, but they weren't clear in the "Tragic
generation."  The poets then kept wanting to be respected for doing their
jobs well.  Instead they were ignored or marginalized and didn't handle that
very well.  After spending time off and on with most of these poets over the
years I came away thinking Berryman the best of the lot with perhaps Plath
being a distant second.  I think now I misjudged Lowell.  Tillinghast did
"witness" to Lowell and that influenced me, but he didn't really treat any
of the poems in such a way that I could see why he appreciated them.  It was
only as a result of acquiring Robert Lowell, Collected Poems and reading
more of Lowell than I ever had in the past that I learned to appreciate him
a wee bit more.  I still wouldn't place him above Berryman however.

Lawrence
        


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[lit-ideas] The Tragic Generation

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