From jfgannon@cloud9.net Sun Apr 29 19:34:45 2001 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.03) with ESMTP id f3U2Yi944984 for ; Sun, 29 Apr 2001 19:34:44 -0700 Received: from russian-caravan.cloud9.net (russian-caravan.cloud9.net [168.100.1.4]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f3U2Yhb04685 for ; Sun, 29 Apr 2001 19:34:43 -0700 Received: from jfgannon (203-180.dialup.cloud9.net [168.100.203.180]) by russian-caravan.cloud9.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 538E228BB0 for ; Sun, 29 Apr 2001 22:34:30 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <001601c0d11e$31d76e40$b4cb64a8@jfgannon> From: "J.F. Gannon" To: References: <000701c0d040$fe78fc40$82519318@Rourke.ne.mediaone.net> <000701c0d040$fe78fc40$82519318@Rourke.ne.mediaone.net> Subject: Re: Propertius, Housman, Carson Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 22:35:17 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Lupher" To: Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2001 4:47 PM Subject: Propertius, Housman, Carson > After all this talk about Manilius in "The Invention of Love," I > was a bit surprised to read the following in Margo Jefferson's > article on the play in the "Arts and Leisure" section in today's NYT: > > I had never heard of Propertius, the Roman poet he spent > so much of his life translating [sic] and whom he spends > so much stage time debating with friends and teachers. > And what I didn't know didn't matter....Housman failed > his classics exam at Oxford, then worked as a clerk in > London's Patent Office and labored for years at a > translation [sic] of this minor, largely forgotten poet > from the ancient world. Why should work that has been > neglected by official history matter? Because, he tells > his friend Pollard, it is "useless knowledge for its > own sake." Actually he failed the exam called "Greats" which was not what most people would call his "classics exam". > > I must say that I was a bit surprised to find a writer for this > relatively respected cultural organ pronouncing Propertius > "forgotten." Has she never dipped into Ezra Pound? Or has > she never heard of him either? (But, as she disarmingly declares, > what she doesn't know doesn't matter.) Right! The NYT is only respected by those who know no better. I speak as one who buys a copy every day because it is one of my local papers. > > Incidentally, since Anne Carson's comment on Manilius has been > invoked of late, list-members may be interested in an interview > with Anne Carson in the March/April issue of "Poets and Writers." > Indeed, she is the cover lady of the magazine. > > Particularly interesting are her comments on how being a classicist > helps one as a poet: > I think every language has its own set of possibilities, > and you can gradually grope out what they are over years > of inhabiting it. When you're in Greek you can somehow > dig down to the very earliest morning of the words, which > gives you a different sense of validity when you're > messing around with those meanings. > I didn't mistranscribe "earliest morning of the words," nor do I > think it was the interviewer's misreading of the tape. It sounds > echt Carson to me. > > As a specific example, she offers a fact that had escaped me, though > I have tried to "inhabit" Greek for some years now: > There's a connective particle "kai" that means "and" usually, > or if there's two of them both "and" and "either/or."...That's > one aspect of Greekness that's fixed in their language that > we can't get. We have to decide between "and" and "either/or." > For them they're just two sides of one coin--as soon as you > think into that fact you realize that the world could be > completely other than it seems. There are a lot of these > little things in Greek. I wouldn't feel confident saying > there are quantitatively more, but there are a lot of those > moments where you enter a fact but then you just think, "Oh, > there's a whole other way to look at this element of reality," > and then you think of the world through that lens for a while > and everything is slightly different. > > I have to say that if "kai...kai" truly means "either/or," I had > better do a lot of re-reading and start thinking of the Greek I have > read through that lens for a while, until everything is slightly > different. > > Have I misunderstood something here? This is characteristically generous on you part. "Helps one as a poet" is a typical petitio principii. One can only wish that Carson had majored in something other than classics. Say chemistry? Will nothing rid us of this fatuous blatherer. J.F. Gannon .