Birders avoid the word 'bird' as otiose. They need to cite the Latin
scientific name for everything they spot.
In a message dated 8/9/2015 2:15:26 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Vendler claims not to have any over-arching
theories; however, here is a review of her latest book and the reviewer
doesn't completely agree with that assertion:
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/reading-poetry/
Thanks for the link. The review is by J. Hanson, and I will provide some
commentary in the ps.
Cheers,
Speranza
What Hanson finds "most striking about her distinguished career is that she
seems to have had no supreme theory".
I.e. no -ism.
"She explains ... that criticism as she understands it is distinct from
both philosophy, which deals in overarching abstractions"
-- unless you are a nominalist! Her husband wasn't!
Hanson goes on to express that Helen Hennessy Vendler "often fails at ...
relating works to the ... philosophical history of their era."
Well, if by philosophical history of the era we mean things as closed as H.
P. Grice's "Play Group", one shouldn't care much!
Hanson goes on to tell us that he sees Hennessy Vendler as having "no
capacity for broad synthetic statements." I thought: wow, she is an analytic
like her husband and H. P. Grice. But no, Hanson opposes 'the synthetic' to
the minute!: "itit is nevertheless that role which informs all of her
writing, from the synthetic to the minute, the range of which is represented
here."
Why the sea?
Hennessy Vendler, Hanson notes, "compares Stevens’ bird to Keats’
nightingale" -- which seems like a stretch in that a nightingale is a definite
genus and species unlike 'bird', which ornithologists don't use -- they use
'aves'.
Hanson goes on to state that for Hennessy Vendler "philosophy" ... has
"traditionally been the centre of the study of the humanities." Not in vain
she married one -- a philosopher, I mean. "Human" is presupposed!
Not having perhaps read Zeno Vendler too analytically, Hanson seems to
suggest that, "when she characterizes philosophy..., she makes [it] much
closer to science[...] than to literature."
But of course most philosophers fear the "Devil of Scientism"! -- Not bold
Popper!
Hanson asks:
"what reader has not fallen in love with a poet?"
Well, Sylvia Plath fell for Hughes. But I think Hanson is trying to be less
of a literalist!
Hanson then goes on to refer to "a marvelous poem", not by
Hennessy-Vendler, "in which, among other arresting figures, a student’s
attempted (then
successful) suicide [and] Macbeth ... blend to form a reckoning with the
totality of human experience."
That's an interesting phrase: 'attempted' suicide, since we were
considering the importance of qualifying phrases: note that an attempted
suicide,
like a plastic flower ain't a flower, ain't a suicide, either!
Hanson:
"she even recalls auditing Paul de Man’s courses at Cornell"
Paul kept the 'de' as aristocratic. -- as G. Mikes says in "How to become a
Brit", adding 'de' to your English or other surname brings an aristocratic
("Norman") ring to it. de Man was loved at Cornell.
Hanson concludes:
"If no one can feel, why would anyone bother to think?"
I recall the same distinction, which Grice found otiose, between 'feel'
(used colloquially for 'believe') and 'think' (used colloquially for
'believe') in Hassall's biography of the poet Rupert Brooke. In one of his
letters
to one of his lovers he said, "You keep talking of what you THINK, but I
don't care a hoot at what you think, as you should care a hoot as to what _I_
think: and focus rather on what I _feel_." The sad thing is that Brooke's
addressee did care a hoot!
Cheers,
Speranza
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