From jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu Wed Mar 8 15:03:49 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id PAA56838 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 15:03:48 -0800 Received: from sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu [129.1.7.7]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id PAA18549 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 15:03:46 -0800 Received: from [129.1.190.210] ([129.1.190.210]) by sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (Lotus Domino Release 5.0.2b) with ESMTP id 2000030817583455:13771 ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 17:58:34 -0500 X-Sender: jmpfund@popj.bgsu.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200003080653.PAA08022@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> References: <200003070816.RAA04882@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 18:07:15 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: "James M. Pfundstein" Subject: Re: beautiful language X-MIMETrack: Itemize by SMTP Server on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/08/2000 05:58:36 PM, Serialize by Router on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/08/2000 05:58:42 PM, Serialize complete at 03/08/2000 05:58:42 PM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" [context follows] I have to admire, but don't intend to imitate, the Olympian Parnassitude of a critic who can afford to despise Joyce as a fiction writer and Dante as a poet. Such profound critical insight might be hard to distinguish from Stygian dimness. tum Tartarus ipse bis patet in praeceps tantum tenditque sub umbras quantus ad aetherium caeli suspectus Olympum. So poor old Dante's guide might put it. JMP("Purgatorio") At 5:02 PM -0500 3/8/2000, Steven J. Willett wrote: >On 7 Mar 00, at 11:47, David Lupher wrote: > >> Come, come. The most beautiful line in English is without a doubt >> "And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin." > >You can't be serious? Pound's opinion is worthless, and Winters >little better. I can think of a dozen sonnets by Sidney, Shakespeare, >Milton and Wordsworth that best it without contest. The line is >charming, but what could match > >With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies ktl. > >> But it isn't just "prominent beauty" that Gombrowicz dumps on there. I'm >> surprised that our list's most erudite and sensitive metrical expert would >> be so taken with a critic who declared that "rhythm and rhyme put me to >> sleep." > >You need to read the whole _Diary_ in context. Gombrowicz was an >astute critic of poetry and poets. Rhythm and rhyme frequently put >me to sleep, too. > >> Steve quotes a provocative passage from Gombrowicz containing the >> following sentence: >> > [snip] What was supposed to have >> > been a momentary flight of prose became a program, a system, >> > a profession--and today one is a Poet, the way one is an >> > engineer or a doctor. [snip] > >I noticed that "flight of prose" too, but assumed it was ironical. I >used the Northwestern translation, but will have to check the Polish >to see if that's what he wrote. > > > Later in his posting Steve remarks: >> >The job of the artist is, as Gombrowicz sees it, to express himself >> >with absolute honesty and sensitivity to the concrete human >> >condition. >> And he proceeds to cite with approval Gombrowicz's characterization of >> >Broch's _Death of Virgil_ and _Ulysses_ and some of Kafka as >> >examples of a prose "born of the very same spirit which illuminates >> >poets; it is essentially a 'poetic prose.'" >> >> Steve may dismiss me as one of the list's "Joycedolators" (a word >> whose formation strikes me as a bit odd), but I must say that I find >> Gombrowicz's inclusion of "Ulysses" here very surprising indeed, for >> there are surely few books which show the "sensitivity to the concrete >> human condition" as vividly and memorably as does "Ulysses." When >> Gombrowicz calls it "remote, inaccessible, and cold," I simply don't >> know what he is talking about, any more than I know what Steve means >> when he lambastes "the experiential sterility" of Joyce's prose. > >There are indeed a lot of concrete details in _Ulysses_, but >everything is passed through Joyce's deep freezer of a mind and >comes out frigid, sterile, lifeless and brittle. That's the measure of >his prose, and it was all quite plain in that other frigid book, >_Dubliners_. There isn't a character in _Ulysses_ I care about the >way I care about, say, Milly Threale. Or even Dr. Behrens in >another novel. Strip away the idolatry from Joyce, put him in with >the enemy and see what happens. That Joyce could write clever, >precise and occasionally engaging prose (in _Portrait_ for example) >I've never contested; what he used the prose to convey is another >matter. Whenever he tries to turn the poet, from the epiphanies of >the _Portrait_ onward, he sinks badly: all shallow, derivative music >just like his own verse. This is obviously a matter of taste, but hardly >irrational. Lots of other people find him sterile besides Gromrowicz. >And please, don't cite the book's ending as an example of "life," >"passion" or "energy." I know it by heart. Beckett's _More Pricks >than Kicks_, not to mention the great trilogy, has more humanity >than all of Joyce put together. And he's funny, which Joyce never >is--even when we're sinking in a quicksand of puns. > >> Steve concludes his thought-provoking posting with the comment that >> there is much in Gombrowicz's essay to anger "the whole mob of contemporary >> American and English poets almost without exception." But the targets >> of Gombrowicz's essay appear to be poets who are extraordinarily >> finicky about the style of their poetry---and sticklers for rhythm and >> rhyme to boot. Somehow, this doesn't sound much like most members of >> the "mob" to which Steve refers. > >Whether they use rhyme or any of English's rhythmic resources is >not really the issue. Gombrowicz' critique applies to extreme vers >librists, so-called LANGUAGE poets, neosurrealists like Ashbery or >new formalists. The issue is whether they have abdicated >expression of the human condition to emote--within the hothouse of >their coterie--poetry only meant for other poets. As I wrote, with an >embedded quotation, "If we do not want culture to lose all >contact with the human individual, 'we must interrupt our diligent >creativity from time to time and check to see if that which we are >creating expresses us.'" It's a common whine of critics that "higher" >culture has become almost completely disconnected from the lives >of most people. Contact with the human individual has been lost, >perhaps not to be reestablished for centuries in this media age, and >for the precise reasons that Gombrowicz gives. The disconnection >has a technical cause, of course, the fragmentation and >spatialization of modernist poetry, but the primary cause is >abandonment of expression. I've noted before that the Russians >never felt that wrong-headed Poundian notion to "make it new." >They keep writing in the old stanzaic and metrical forms, but they >constantly find ways to speak from the heart to the heart without >sinking into pastiche. They are living proof that the aesthetic >breakthrough Mann thought so important for nonparodic creation is >unnecessary if one has something to say. > >If Gombrowicz angers poetry lovers and poets, he will certainly >anger Dante lovers in his meditation on Dante. I suggest reading it >first and then turning to Beckett's "Dante and the Lobster." One >could engage the most somnambulistic students by having them go >from the Inferno to Gombrowicz to Beckett. Too bad it's never been >done before. > > > > >========================================== >Steven J. Willett >University of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu Campus >2-3 Nunohashi 3-chome >Hamamatsu City, Japan 432-8012 >Voice: (53) 457-4514; Fax: (53) 457-4514 >Japan email: steven@sizcol1.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp >US email: sjwillett@earthlink.net .