Needless to say, you gotta read da book to get da full treatmemt.
RS Crane quietly, succinctly surveys the last few many hundred yrs of poetry criticism, & finds that, despite all the excellencies, dey most of em summat missed the point.
Poetry remains an undiscovered moon.
Here's the conclusion to the section I quoted earlier:
"It is easy to see, therefore, why the critic who uses this language is necessarily restricted, in his selection of attributes for poetry or individual poems, to such characteristics as have clear counterparts or logical contraries in the non-poetic discourse which he takes as the other term of his comparison. This is not to say that the method is incapable of differentiating poetry, as poetry, from other things or of serving as a basis for practical criticism of a highly particularized and perceptive sort. It is, however, to say that the discriminations it permits between poetry and other forms of writing or between the various kinds of poetry are such - and such alone - as can be arrived at by asking what characteristics among those possible in discourse are here present and in what special modifications and combinations. It is not a method, in other words, that allows the critic, as Aristotle's method does, to consider poems in their peculiar aspect as distinct kinds of concrete wholes, of which the special character, as poetic wholes, is determined by internal principles of construction that have, at least as far as imitative poetry is concerned, no strict parallels in philosophy, science, rhetoric, or history." [pp.93-94]
Showing posts with label ideology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ideology. Show all posts
10.06.2005
Here is a long quote from one of the summary-transition paragraphs of RS Crane's book. I think even without the examples & evidence he offers, you can see how the kind of a priori -theoretical "discourse-application" method he describes, sounds very familiar to us. This relates very much, I think, to what A. Mlinko was getting at, with regard to the problem of reading poems as extrapolated "arguments".
On the other hand, Aristotle's notion of [& method of investigating] an intrinsic, special structure & form of poetry, as "imitation" rather than as verbal discourse, holds, as I have been saying, some serious potential for the reception & interpretation of present-day poetry.
RS Crane, The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (U. Toronto Press, 1953), pp. 88-89:
"It is thus correct to say of these other critics, as not of Aristotle, that poetry exists for them primarily in a "verbal universe." And this fact has consequences of the greatest importance with respect both to the principles on which their criticism is based and to the method by which these principles are discovered and applied. The principles of poetics, for Aristotle, we have seen to be principles peculiar to the art of poetry, as the distinctive art of "making" or "imitating" human actions and other experiences in words, or to one or another of the various poetic species; they are identical with the necessary and sufficient internal causes, or principles of construction, that must operate in the writing of a given poem if it is to be a beautiful whole of the particular form desired; they vary accordingly from species to species; and they can be discovered only by reasoning a posteriori from the inductively known nature of any given kind of existing poems to the conditions of artistic success or failure in poems of that sort. For the critics in the second tradition, on the other hand, the principles of poetic criticism are necessarily specifications of principles operative throughout the field of writing as a whole. The basic principles of poetry are therefore identical with the principles basic to all varieties of verbal composition; and of these the most basic, as Quintilian long ago remarked, are the two elements without which purposive speech of any kind could not exist - res and verba, things and language, a subject and the words in which it is expressed, a content and a verbal form; after which the next most important, in any discourse that goes beyond a single utterance, is arrangement. If poetry is to be studied in terms of its character as discourse, in a context of other modes of verbal statement, these are indeed the primary elements to which the critic must refer and upon which he must build - as the modern critics I have quoted clearly do - in his efforts to say what poetry is as a special mode of speech, to discriminate its possible kinds, or to determine the standards upon which it is to be judged.
"They are, it will be noted, the elements which Aristotle distinguished for rhetoric rather than for poetics, and hence, as principles of poetry, they are essentially reductive, in the sense that, unlike the distinction of object, means, manner, and "power", which applies only to imitative poems, they tend to assimilate the structure of poetry to the structure of any discourse, however "unpoetic", in which we can discriminate aspects of content, language, and arrangement. It is necessary therefore to look for other principles through which the meanings of these basic terms (and especially of the first two) can be so specified as to give us a distinctive subject-matter for the criticism of poetry; and this is what the definitions of poetry I have quoted and the many others like them in this tradition are designed to do. They are based on the assumption that poetry has no intrinsic nature such as can be known sufficiently by an induction of the conditions essential to the production of poems as special kinds of wholes but is something that participates, with a difference, in the nature of discourse in general, or rather what is taken, hypothetically, as the characteristic of discourse in general which appears to illuminate most satisfactorily for the critic the problems and values of poetry. This characteristic once selected, the next step is the determination of appropriate differentiae; and from the hypothesis thus formed the critic can then derive, by dialectical necessity... all the more particular terms he needs for the discussion of poetry and poems."
On the other hand, Aristotle's notion of [& method of investigating] an intrinsic, special structure & form of poetry, as "imitation" rather than as verbal discourse, holds, as I have been saying, some serious potential for the reception & interpretation of present-day poetry.
RS Crane, The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (U. Toronto Press, 1953), pp. 88-89:
"It is thus correct to say of these other critics, as not of Aristotle, that poetry exists for them primarily in a "verbal universe." And this fact has consequences of the greatest importance with respect both to the principles on which their criticism is based and to the method by which these principles are discovered and applied. The principles of poetics, for Aristotle, we have seen to be principles peculiar to the art of poetry, as the distinctive art of "making" or "imitating" human actions and other experiences in words, or to one or another of the various poetic species; they are identical with the necessary and sufficient internal causes, or principles of construction, that must operate in the writing of a given poem if it is to be a beautiful whole of the particular form desired; they vary accordingly from species to species; and they can be discovered only by reasoning a posteriori from the inductively known nature of any given kind of existing poems to the conditions of artistic success or failure in poems of that sort. For the critics in the second tradition, on the other hand, the principles of poetic criticism are necessarily specifications of principles operative throughout the field of writing as a whole. The basic principles of poetry are therefore identical with the principles basic to all varieties of verbal composition; and of these the most basic, as Quintilian long ago remarked, are the two elements without which purposive speech of any kind could not exist - res and verba, things and language, a subject and the words in which it is expressed, a content and a verbal form; after which the next most important, in any discourse that goes beyond a single utterance, is arrangement. If poetry is to be studied in terms of its character as discourse, in a context of other modes of verbal statement, these are indeed the primary elements to which the critic must refer and upon which he must build - as the modern critics I have quoted clearly do - in his efforts to say what poetry is as a special mode of speech, to discriminate its possible kinds, or to determine the standards upon which it is to be judged.
"They are, it will be noted, the elements which Aristotle distinguished for rhetoric rather than for poetics, and hence, as principles of poetry, they are essentially reductive, in the sense that, unlike the distinction of object, means, manner, and "power", which applies only to imitative poems, they tend to assimilate the structure of poetry to the structure of any discourse, however "unpoetic", in which we can discriminate aspects of content, language, and arrangement. It is necessary therefore to look for other principles through which the meanings of these basic terms (and especially of the first two) can be so specified as to give us a distinctive subject-matter for the criticism of poetry; and this is what the definitions of poetry I have quoted and the many others like them in this tradition are designed to do. They are based on the assumption that poetry has no intrinsic nature such as can be known sufficiently by an induction of the conditions essential to the production of poems as special kinds of wholes but is something that participates, with a difference, in the nature of discourse in general, or rather what is taken, hypothetically, as the characteristic of discourse in general which appears to illuminate most satisfactorily for the critic the problems and values of poetry. This characteristic once selected, the next step is the determination of appropriate differentiae; and from the hypothesis thus formed the critic can then derive, by dialectical necessity... all the more particular terms he needs for the discussion of poetry and poems."
10.05.2005
I think Ange Mlinko is thinking along an adjacent meander this morning (see her comments on political reactivity-response).
"If there's a solution to this quandary, it lies in treating poetry
other than as a vehicle for argument. Matisse was not a decorator
of living rooms; he was a painter solving painters' problems. What are
poets' problems -- that is, ours alone?"
"If there's a solution to this quandary, it lies in treating poetry
other than as a vehicle for argument. Matisse was not a decorator
of living rooms; he was a painter solving painters' problems. What are
poets' problems -- that is, ours alone?"
Digging around for more background on the Chicago critics, came upon this excerpt from Richard Ohmann (1976).
I can't pretend to be much of a lit historian, but this essay seems to appear toward the beginning of another generation of radical critique, based on a Marxist interpretation of culture. Ohmann seems even-handed & careful about New Critics, interesting overview here of the mid-century theories about nature & purpose of poetry.
Have trouble accepting the underlying premise, however, which seems to be: that social injustices are systemic in nature; that we understand what that system does; that the intellectual classes, the bourgeoisie in general, create their own self-protective ideologies which blind them to reality, etc. etc. [Here we note the parochial bias against business, entrepreneurialism, individual & family enterprise - all those economic activities which structure much of past & present world social economy.]
I don't deny the pervasive & insidious presence of injustice & evil. Nor the forces of conformity & exploitation which structure & process the social reality we inhabit. But I question whether the appropriate interpretation of this reality is a purely econo-political one. That is I think of injustice and inequality - & the seemingly entrenched patterns of oppression which they assume - as symptoms, rather than causes.
Taken as causes, the logic leads to the denunciation of bourgeois property rights, capitalism, the rule of law, democratic institutions, private enterprise, and so on; it leads to the moral disenfranchisement of independent cultural activity (academia, art, literature) - its chastisement for complicity in the "system" (cf. Ohmann's analysis).
If taken as symptoms, the entrenched injustices and inequalities of various nations & societies may have very different systemic shapes & developments; there may be no simple "answer" (Marxist, socialist, nationalist, ethnic, religious, etc.) which provides utopian solutions to the underlying causes : ie. the greed, selfishness, bigotry, aggression, malice, hatred, cowardice, fraudulence, intellectual/moral blindness of human beings, persons, individuals.
Understood this way, we might recognize the ethical value which sometimes accompanies (& enhances) those independent (semi-guilty) aesthetic pleasures & enjoyments (of various degrees of intellectual insight & innocence) which we give & take - in the midst of social corruption, injustice & cruelty. It's a value contained in the moral representation of realities for which we have no simple, abstract, systemic solution, no bureaucratic assignment of moral duties. This is a value in addition to the natural & inherent values offered by beauty in general.
I can't pretend to be much of a lit historian, but this essay seems to appear toward the beginning of another generation of radical critique, based on a Marxist interpretation of culture. Ohmann seems even-handed & careful about New Critics, interesting overview here of the mid-century theories about nature & purpose of poetry.
Have trouble accepting the underlying premise, however, which seems to be: that social injustices are systemic in nature; that we understand what that system does; that the intellectual classes, the bourgeoisie in general, create their own self-protective ideologies which blind them to reality, etc. etc. [Here we note the parochial bias against business, entrepreneurialism, individual & family enterprise - all those economic activities which structure much of past & present world social economy.]
I don't deny the pervasive & insidious presence of injustice & evil. Nor the forces of conformity & exploitation which structure & process the social reality we inhabit. But I question whether the appropriate interpretation of this reality is a purely econo-political one. That is I think of injustice and inequality - & the seemingly entrenched patterns of oppression which they assume - as symptoms, rather than causes.
Taken as causes, the logic leads to the denunciation of bourgeois property rights, capitalism, the rule of law, democratic institutions, private enterprise, and so on; it leads to the moral disenfranchisement of independent cultural activity (academia, art, literature) - its chastisement for complicity in the "system" (cf. Ohmann's analysis).
If taken as symptoms, the entrenched injustices and inequalities of various nations & societies may have very different systemic shapes & developments; there may be no simple "answer" (Marxist, socialist, nationalist, ethnic, religious, etc.) which provides utopian solutions to the underlying causes : ie. the greed, selfishness, bigotry, aggression, malice, hatred, cowardice, fraudulence, intellectual/moral blindness of human beings, persons, individuals.
Understood this way, we might recognize the ethical value which sometimes accompanies (& enhances) those independent (semi-guilty) aesthetic pleasures & enjoyments (of various degrees of intellectual insight & innocence) which we give & take - in the midst of social corruption, injustice & cruelty. It's a value contained in the moral representation of realities for which we have no simple, abstract, systemic solution, no bureaucratic assignment of moral duties. This is a value in addition to the natural & inherent values offered by beauty in general.
9.17.2005
Jane Dark has a very structured & programmatic way of addressing questions (in which one of my comments on the politics of poetics gets described as "absurd"). I can't say I've thought things through as systematically, but off the top of my head, responding:
in the outline she draws here of history & poetry, and Marxist criticism, she is careful not to predetermine any commitments that might be (falsely) assumed to follow from a Marxist-critical starting point. Nevertheless, she is at the same time careful to posit the basic underpinnings of the approach : 1) "history" determines the meaning of particulars (events) : ie. history is the primary & adequate frame of reference for interpretation; 2) consciousness is determined by social forces which also "make" history (consciously or not); and 3) if we identify "emergent poetics", we are bringing to awareness the mode of poetics which is aligned or at least recognizes the forces of changing contemporary history, as opposed to "residual" or backward-looking or traditionalist poetics.
The underlying assumption here is that history itself is determined by economics (ie. class struggle) : what we call the frame of history is colored by the struggle for economic dominion (ie. control of resources & means of production).
The absurd point(s) I was trying to make, and would like to reiterate, is that it seems to me that, first of all, history itself is producing a narrative which contradicts Marx in many respects; for example, the struggle between labor & capital does not seem to shape & define social relations & power structures in the determinist manner which Marx predicted. Social relations, social power, & social development are defined by communities which are not simply determined, in turn, solely by their status as bourgeoisie or working class. What this means is, that even if we choose "history" as the ultimate interpretive frame, history itself is not necessarily defined accurately in Marxist terms.
Secondly, it seems to follow from this that if we are imposing a false (let's say, "materialist") notion of historical causality, we will come up with a skewed image of literature. Rather than assent to a particular theory of history, which then colors our view of literary phenomena, I would argue that "history" is a human work-in-progress - an unresolved, intellectually improvisatory phenomenon, resulting from the interrelation of the workings of time & nature (a reality outside total human control) with human consciousness. We make & write history - and these activities change as new knowledge is gained (& in some cases old knowledge lost). In other words, we have no complete & authoritative version of either history or history-making which we can simply apply to our theory of literature or poetics.
& if this is the case, then it seems irrational to apply a theory of history - since it will be either false or incomplete - as a means toward the "explanation" of literature. It's a case of overburdening criticism with unexplained or unexplainable or inapplicable levels of abstraction.
Criticism & poetics is in the position of devising its own interpretive frameworks. As long as these are laid out clearly, the reader is enabled to recognize the assumptions & assertions undergirding these interpretations. The reader may or may not agree with the provisional outline of history or literature which the critic supplies; but the reader will be in a position to evaluate not only the preliminary assumptions, but their applications as part of the critic's (or the artist's) whole method & approach to specific works of art.
Thirdly, & finally, I would question the simple application of the category of history to the category literature. In a fundamental way, art interprets reality - shows it back to us - by means & methods, and with goals, which rival, & differ from, those used in the narrative/interpretive activity we call history.
in the outline she draws here of history & poetry, and Marxist criticism, she is careful not to predetermine any commitments that might be (falsely) assumed to follow from a Marxist-critical starting point. Nevertheless, she is at the same time careful to posit the basic underpinnings of the approach : 1) "history" determines the meaning of particulars (events) : ie. history is the primary & adequate frame of reference for interpretation; 2) consciousness is determined by social forces which also "make" history (consciously or not); and 3) if we identify "emergent poetics", we are bringing to awareness the mode of poetics which is aligned or at least recognizes the forces of changing contemporary history, as opposed to "residual" or backward-looking or traditionalist poetics.
The underlying assumption here is that history itself is determined by economics (ie. class struggle) : what we call the frame of history is colored by the struggle for economic dominion (ie. control of resources & means of production).
The absurd point(s) I was trying to make, and would like to reiterate, is that it seems to me that, first of all, history itself is producing a narrative which contradicts Marx in many respects; for example, the struggle between labor & capital does not seem to shape & define social relations & power structures in the determinist manner which Marx predicted. Social relations, social power, & social development are defined by communities which are not simply determined, in turn, solely by their status as bourgeoisie or working class. What this means is, that even if we choose "history" as the ultimate interpretive frame, history itself is not necessarily defined accurately in Marxist terms.
Secondly, it seems to follow from this that if we are imposing a false (let's say, "materialist") notion of historical causality, we will come up with a skewed image of literature. Rather than assent to a particular theory of history, which then colors our view of literary phenomena, I would argue that "history" is a human work-in-progress - an unresolved, intellectually improvisatory phenomenon, resulting from the interrelation of the workings of time & nature (a reality outside total human control) with human consciousness. We make & write history - and these activities change as new knowledge is gained (& in some cases old knowledge lost). In other words, we have no complete & authoritative version of either history or history-making which we can simply apply to our theory of literature or poetics.
& if this is the case, then it seems irrational to apply a theory of history - since it will be either false or incomplete - as a means toward the "explanation" of literature. It's a case of overburdening criticism with unexplained or unexplainable or inapplicable levels of abstraction.
Criticism & poetics is in the position of devising its own interpretive frameworks. As long as these are laid out clearly, the reader is enabled to recognize the assumptions & assertions undergirding these interpretations. The reader may or may not agree with the provisional outline of history or literature which the critic supplies; but the reader will be in a position to evaluate not only the preliminary assumptions, but their applications as part of the critic's (or the artist's) whole method & approach to specific works of art.
Thirdly, & finally, I would question the simple application of the category of history to the category literature. In a fundamental way, art interprets reality - shows it back to us - by means & methods, and with goals, which rival, & differ from, those used in the narrative/interpretive activity we call history.
7.07.2005
Josh responds to my post of yesterday. He misreads a couple of my comments. I didn't say I found the supposed relations between economics & culture depressive & oppressive in themselves; what bothers me (or should I say offends me) are the pseudo-sophisticated translations of those relations into supposed literary or critical values. This was the kind of thing the Soviets did so well, and that ideologues of both left & right always pursue : making political dough out of the yeast of art.
Secondly, my comments about developments in India & China referred not to labor outsourcing or globalization : my point was that the astounding expansion of (relatively) free enterprise economies and (relatively) private property relations rendered pseudo-Marxist terms like "late-late-capitalism" meaningless.
Labor relations, social justice, and human rights will be forwarded on a different basis and with a different vocabulary of values than those exuded by the stale and peevish academic-literary communities of the US - which can't seem to admit to themselves that their current attitudes and concepts have very little of positive value to contribute to the actual reform & betterment of society.
Secondly, my comments about developments in India & China referred not to labor outsourcing or globalization : my point was that the astounding expansion of (relatively) free enterprise economies and (relatively) private property relations rendered pseudo-Marxist terms like "late-late-capitalism" meaningless.
Labor relations, social justice, and human rights will be forwarded on a different basis and with a different vocabulary of values than those exuded by the stale and peevish academic-literary communities of the US - which can't seem to admit to themselves that their current attitudes and concepts have very little of positive value to contribute to the actual reform & betterment of society.
7.06.2005
Curious how left-politically-oriented literary readings, like Josh's - now that Marxism appears finished for the most part as a systematic economics, and as a political movement - re-animate the Benjamin/Adorno term "messianic". As though there's a ratio between actual political conditions (since 1989) and the level of vague utopian-mystical emphasis in some literary circles.
I find these equations between "late-late-capital conditions" and changes in poetic style sort of tedious and depressive, or oppressive. Something a-historical and attenuated about them : general spleen about working conditions & politics gets larded with these pretentious comments on the latest poetic in-group fringe phenomena. "Late-late-capitalism" : how baroque, considering current conditions in India, China, and around the world : how utterly irrelevant as a descriptor.
For me Catholic Church doctrines on economics are more subtle & relevant, since the Church has had to find a way to balance things like Polish independence & Western capitalism, liberation theology & theology per se, and living & working conditions not just in the socialist & capitalist countries but throughout the world. This balancing act, along with the Church's longstanding tradition of concern for Labor, has filtered into its analyses. I certainly don't agree with everything they come out with, but I like the late Pope's criticisms of both capitalism & socialism; I like the notions presented in several U.S. & Vatican church documents on economics, which make a claim for both private property and economic justice.
Compared with certain populist & Catholic strains of economic thinking, a lot of American literary leftism comes across as effete & impractical. Yet according to these critics, whole schools of poetry are built on supposedly deep reactions of American poets to economic & political conditions. May be more rhetorical heat than light in those reactions.
I find these equations between "late-late-capital conditions" and changes in poetic style sort of tedious and depressive, or oppressive. Something a-historical and attenuated about them : general spleen about working conditions & politics gets larded with these pretentious comments on the latest poetic in-group fringe phenomena. "Late-late-capitalism" : how baroque, considering current conditions in India, China, and around the world : how utterly irrelevant as a descriptor.
For me Catholic Church doctrines on economics are more subtle & relevant, since the Church has had to find a way to balance things like Polish independence & Western capitalism, liberation theology & theology per se, and living & working conditions not just in the socialist & capitalist countries but throughout the world. This balancing act, along with the Church's longstanding tradition of concern for Labor, has filtered into its analyses. I certainly don't agree with everything they come out with, but I like the late Pope's criticisms of both capitalism & socialism; I like the notions presented in several U.S. & Vatican church documents on economics, which make a claim for both private property and economic justice.
Compared with certain populist & Catholic strains of economic thinking, a lot of American literary leftism comes across as effete & impractical. Yet according to these critics, whole schools of poetry are built on supposedly deep reactions of American poets to economic & political conditions. May be more rhetorical heat than light in those reactions.
6.16.2005
Josh responds thoughtfully. Here he says:
"Haven't read Stephen Prickett, but his account of an unhistorical "shared human experience" that trumps Kant (and Descartes' Cogito, too, it sounds like) sounds rather murky. Certainly one of the things that makes literature literary is its refusal to be contained by the hardening of ideology: if it does so harden we're liable to label it propaganda or doggerel. Good writing seems by definition unable to be pinned down to any single program, and maybe that does have something to do with the "double focus" of metaphor—though is metaphor why, for example, Milton's Satan is such an attractive character in spite of the confirmed Christian ideology of his creator? Metaphor as locus of indeterminacy seems to turn metaphor itself into a site of the unrealizable sublime, which is kind of an interesting idea but at least for the moment stops my thought in its tracks."
- I admit that was a weak section of my post. I haven't translated Prickett rightly there. He writes about the vagaries of "poetry" as a critical term : from ballooning out to include all human mental activity (Coleridgean creative poiesis of the human world), to restricted to representing modes of subjective feeling, leaving "objectivity" to science & history, etc.
Prickett cites A.D. Nuttall's studies of Shakespeare, where Nuttall focuses on what makes a certain work of literature compelling, and finds it where the force of particular & peculiar human characters, & their interaction - the record of experience - the record of consciences coming up against intractable difficulties - breaks through the writer's own set of social conventions & stylized formulae. This leads to a certain messiness or "indeterminacy", indeed - & yet what Nuttall returns to is that the work's very forcefulness is evidence of having reached a certain bedrock of shared experience - shared by those who recognize & respond to it. (The title of one of Nuttall's books is The Common Sky). It's the same thing that may be happening in reader's ambivalent response, as Josh mentions, to Milton's Satan.
Is there something here that tends toward a set of critical values for reading both ends of the current spectrum (from Josh's faux-naif (heart? lyric?) to "lucid" po-po-po-constructivism-ism (mind?))? Maybe - if also partaking of metaphoric "double-vision" in Prickett's sense : a readerly dialect that binds together & balances & sheds light on the antimonies & warring contraries & spiritual conundra & exigencies of conscience of the present...
I'm probably using a lot of highfalutin' soundin' phraseos for something very simple. (Anything to do with Jonathan's #3 - poem that is "bad in ways that don't matter - so good" (my paraphrase)? Authenticity? Rightness? I repeat Mandelstam's famous retort when asked by a (state-sponsored) journalist for his definition of poetry : "The poet's sense of being right.")
"Haven't read Stephen Prickett, but his account of an unhistorical "shared human experience" that trumps Kant (and Descartes' Cogito, too, it sounds like) sounds rather murky. Certainly one of the things that makes literature literary is its refusal to be contained by the hardening of ideology: if it does so harden we're liable to label it propaganda or doggerel. Good writing seems by definition unable to be pinned down to any single program, and maybe that does have something to do with the "double focus" of metaphor—though is metaphor why, for example, Milton's Satan is such an attractive character in spite of the confirmed Christian ideology of his creator? Metaphor as locus of indeterminacy seems to turn metaphor itself into a site of the unrealizable sublime, which is kind of an interesting idea but at least for the moment stops my thought in its tracks."
- I admit that was a weak section of my post. I haven't translated Prickett rightly there. He writes about the vagaries of "poetry" as a critical term : from ballooning out to include all human mental activity (Coleridgean creative poiesis of the human world), to restricted to representing modes of subjective feeling, leaving "objectivity" to science & history, etc.
Prickett cites A.D. Nuttall's studies of Shakespeare, where Nuttall focuses on what makes a certain work of literature compelling, and finds it where the force of particular & peculiar human characters, & their interaction - the record of experience - the record of consciences coming up against intractable difficulties - breaks through the writer's own set of social conventions & stylized formulae. This leads to a certain messiness or "indeterminacy", indeed - & yet what Nuttall returns to is that the work's very forcefulness is evidence of having reached a certain bedrock of shared experience - shared by those who recognize & respond to it. (The title of one of Nuttall's books is The Common Sky). It's the same thing that may be happening in reader's ambivalent response, as Josh mentions, to Milton's Satan.
Is there something here that tends toward a set of critical values for reading both ends of the current spectrum (from Josh's faux-naif (heart? lyric?) to "lucid" po-po-po-constructivism-ism (mind?))? Maybe - if also partaking of metaphoric "double-vision" in Prickett's sense : a readerly dialect that binds together & balances & sheds light on the antimonies & warring contraries & spiritual conundra & exigencies of conscience of the present...
I'm probably using a lot of highfalutin' soundin' phraseos for something very simple. (Anything to do with Jonathan's #3 - poem that is "bad in ways that don't matter - so good" (my paraphrase)? Authenticity? Rightness? I repeat Mandelstam's famous retort when asked by a (state-sponsored) journalist for his definition of poetry : "The poet's sense of being right.")
6.15.2005
Fleeting notes (in midst of work) to Josh's post of yesterday:
Like most oppositions, Altieri's is probably both a necessary discrimination, and an oversimplification. A period style cannot be reduced to one-word labels (lucidity/lyricism). What for example is the role of the so-called 'scenic' in establishing a 'lucid' storyline, a narrative which embodies a particular moral/ political challenge? The "scenic" can't so easily be dismissed. Witness the poetry of Anne Winter.
On another issue: one should be careful not to assume clear separations or grant simple "objectivity" to, or simple causal relations between, literature on the one hand, and socio-historical changes on the other. Josh seems to be presenting another version of the Marxist-materialist "superstructure" causal theory of art & culture. Stephen Prickett has a lot of helpful things to say about this (see previous posts on his book Words and The Word).
The "indeterminacy" mode of much postmodern art & literature was part of a philosophical era which emphasized our inability to define or separate the subjective from the objective. But Prickett argues that the Kantian & post-Kantian paradigms, which underlie that trend in philosophy & literature, cannot do away with a shared human sense of experience per se (however much our words for it change through time). He points to A.D. Nuttalls' approach to Shakespeare (A New Mimesis) & other writers. Nuttall emphasizes how powerful felt experience breaks through the stylizations of each literary era (the complexity of Shakespeare's characters & situations breaks through the monarchical-classical literary dicta & crystallized rhetorical artifice of the time; in the same way the personal drama of King David depicted in the Bible breaks through the literary ideology meant to shape and contain it). Prickett shows how Nuttall's approach is close to, but not quite the same as, that of Bakhtin; but I can't get into the complexities of all that here.
We could look at this blog symposium on the future of post-post-post-indeterminacy etc. as a search for a critical vocabulary for what kind of poetry breaks through our own period stylizations into something new & compelling. Prickett returns the focus to the pivotal role of metaphor. Metaphor, he says, stands between diction/etymology on the one hand, and "story" (history, narrative, discourse, science, etc) on the other. Poetry circles around & centers in metaphor itself. Prickett goes back to the disjunctions of the Elijah story and the sayings of the pre-Socratics, & links them with Coleridge & other Romantics, to illuminate how metaphor creates a double-focus or double vision in order to do at least two things: 1) synthesize & relate opposites (Heraclitus' notion of the logos joining opposites in the equilibrium of the taut bow); 2) create a double-focus vision, in order to represent both new discoveries, and the inherently unrepresentable. He looks at the black-white rorschach image of the 2 profiles which form the shape of a vase : you can't see both the vase & the faces at the same time : your focus continually shifts back & forth. He links this to Dante's scene in Purgatory with Beatrice & the Griffin : when Dante sees this lion-bird directly, it's an absurdity : but when he sees it reflected in Beatrice's green eyes, he sees how the animal shifts quickly back & forth between beast & bird.
& Prickett links this, also, with the dramatic exchange when Dante first meets Beatrice again, & she chastises him : Dante, and the reader, cannot synthesize the image of Beatrice as avatar of divine justice, with her personal injustice toward him : we suddenly see the self (Dante) broken & humiliated just as he achieves the earthly paradise : the shock of this breakdown of the self reflects back on the self's (in)capacity to "comprehend" experience & reality - and then to narrate or describe it at all. We are confronted in this text with both a compelling narrative situation ("lyricism") and a paradoxical representation of the shocking and the "indescribable" (the "lucid").
That "traditional" writings (Shakespeare, Dante, Bible) already exhibit, for their times, both the problems & the solutions - both the lyrical-compelling narratives and their critical paradoxes - should give us pause. A critical estimate of what is valuable to us in poetry today cannot be based on simple oppositions between supposed socio-political-historical pressures (reified always already into ideology), on the one hand, and rejected, stereotyped or valorized period formulae, on the other.
Like most oppositions, Altieri's is probably both a necessary discrimination, and an oversimplification. A period style cannot be reduced to one-word labels (lucidity/lyricism). What for example is the role of the so-called 'scenic' in establishing a 'lucid' storyline, a narrative which embodies a particular moral/ political challenge? The "scenic" can't so easily be dismissed. Witness the poetry of Anne Winter.
On another issue: one should be careful not to assume clear separations or grant simple "objectivity" to, or simple causal relations between, literature on the one hand, and socio-historical changes on the other. Josh seems to be presenting another version of the Marxist-materialist "superstructure" causal theory of art & culture. Stephen Prickett has a lot of helpful things to say about this (see previous posts on his book Words and The Word).
The "indeterminacy" mode of much postmodern art & literature was part of a philosophical era which emphasized our inability to define or separate the subjective from the objective. But Prickett argues that the Kantian & post-Kantian paradigms, which underlie that trend in philosophy & literature, cannot do away with a shared human sense of experience per se (however much our words for it change through time). He points to A.D. Nuttalls' approach to Shakespeare (A New Mimesis) & other writers. Nuttall emphasizes how powerful felt experience breaks through the stylizations of each literary era (the complexity of Shakespeare's characters & situations breaks through the monarchical-classical literary dicta & crystallized rhetorical artifice of the time; in the same way the personal drama of King David depicted in the Bible breaks through the literary ideology meant to shape and contain it). Prickett shows how Nuttall's approach is close to, but not quite the same as, that of Bakhtin; but I can't get into the complexities of all that here.
We could look at this blog symposium on the future of post-post-post-indeterminacy etc. as a search for a critical vocabulary for what kind of poetry breaks through our own period stylizations into something new & compelling. Prickett returns the focus to the pivotal role of metaphor. Metaphor, he says, stands between diction/etymology on the one hand, and "story" (history, narrative, discourse, science, etc) on the other. Poetry circles around & centers in metaphor itself. Prickett goes back to the disjunctions of the Elijah story and the sayings of the pre-Socratics, & links them with Coleridge & other Romantics, to illuminate how metaphor creates a double-focus or double vision in order to do at least two things: 1) synthesize & relate opposites (Heraclitus' notion of the logos joining opposites in the equilibrium of the taut bow); 2) create a double-focus vision, in order to represent both new discoveries, and the inherently unrepresentable. He looks at the black-white rorschach image of the 2 profiles which form the shape of a vase : you can't see both the vase & the faces at the same time : your focus continually shifts back & forth. He links this to Dante's scene in Purgatory with Beatrice & the Griffin : when Dante sees this lion-bird directly, it's an absurdity : but when he sees it reflected in Beatrice's green eyes, he sees how the animal shifts quickly back & forth between beast & bird.
& Prickett links this, also, with the dramatic exchange when Dante first meets Beatrice again, & she chastises him : Dante, and the reader, cannot synthesize the image of Beatrice as avatar of divine justice, with her personal injustice toward him : we suddenly see the self (Dante) broken & humiliated just as he achieves the earthly paradise : the shock of this breakdown of the self reflects back on the self's (in)capacity to "comprehend" experience & reality - and then to narrate or describe it at all. We are confronted in this text with both a compelling narrative situation ("lyricism") and a paradoxical representation of the shocking and the "indescribable" (the "lucid").
That "traditional" writings (Shakespeare, Dante, Bible) already exhibit, for their times, both the problems & the solutions - both the lyrical-compelling narratives and their critical paradoxes - should give us pause. A critical estimate of what is valuable to us in poetry today cannot be based on simple oppositions between supposed socio-political-historical pressures (reified always already into ideology), on the one hand, and rejected, stereotyped or valorized period formulae, on the other.
6.03.2005
I appreciate Jonathan's engagement with my blog & the problems raised. In the process he illuminates the gaping chasm between general principles & present realities. That gap leaves me, too, feeling powerless & even foolish.
But why is it that politically-correct musings on the beauties of anarchist principles is looked upon as a noble thing, a sign of earnest idealism and moral enlightenment - while on the other hand, musing on the moral underpinnings of our own democracy is considered hopelessly a) deluded or b) immoral (complicit)?
There is conflict or contradiction nestled in the heart of every "partial good" : its very goodness can become a form of idolatry. Thus patriotic devotion leads to immoral actions on behalf of my nation. (Not to mention hypocritical allegiance to a supposed principled cause, motivated by purely selfish interest.) So people are understandably suspicious of the uncritical vaunting of our own political system and our own culture. However, I believe that, just as often, habits of criticism and suspicion obscure the real values at work, and distort history. Anyone who praises our own system of government is likely to be branded as someone who has "made peace with the regime", or been co-opted, or is invested in the establishment, etc. etc. But I think it should be pointed out that there are ideologies at work in the culturally-cool gestures of the self-righteous rebel.
God, it's been a long Friday.
But why is it that politically-correct musings on the beauties of anarchist principles is looked upon as a noble thing, a sign of earnest idealism and moral enlightenment - while on the other hand, musing on the moral underpinnings of our own democracy is considered hopelessly a) deluded or b) immoral (complicit)?
There is conflict or contradiction nestled in the heart of every "partial good" : its very goodness can become a form of idolatry. Thus patriotic devotion leads to immoral actions on behalf of my nation. (Not to mention hypocritical allegiance to a supposed principled cause, motivated by purely selfish interest.) So people are understandably suspicious of the uncritical vaunting of our own political system and our own culture. However, I believe that, just as often, habits of criticism and suspicion obscure the real values at work, and distort history. Anyone who praises our own system of government is likely to be branded as someone who has "made peace with the regime", or been co-opted, or is invested in the establishment, etc. etc. But I think it should be pointed out that there are ideologies at work in the culturally-cool gestures of the self-righteous rebel.
God, it's been a long Friday.
5.05.2005
Reginald Shepherd, in his emails to Josh Corey, made a forceful statement, judging from its effects : lots of bloggers commented - & even John Latta arose to defend Ron Silliman!
Are we all complete idiots, to be so fixated for so long on "poetry & politics"? Or has this been a real unresolved problem in contemporary poetry?
It would be hypocritical to stand for some kind of ivory-tower aesthetic purism. Everybody knows that style is suffused with, & motivated by, politics, at least in the broad "cultural" sense of the term (as in, "identity politics").
Underlying the American style & theory wars of the 20th century stands a deeper, Janus-like trend : the popularization of literature (poetry). Janus-like because it involves both the expansion and thinning-out of aesthetic literacy. Everyone writes poetry but nobody knows much about its history. It's not longer produced by the few and it's no longer read by the many!
Perhaps, then, the character of one's approach to tradition is the main catalyst for producing the affiliations with particular styles or literary groups. (This is an attempt at a literary, rather than political, interpretation of such phenomena.)
I'm with Shepherd, by the way. Ideology tends to shortcut literary criticism.
Are we all complete idiots, to be so fixated for so long on "poetry & politics"? Or has this been a real unresolved problem in contemporary poetry?
It would be hypocritical to stand for some kind of ivory-tower aesthetic purism. Everybody knows that style is suffused with, & motivated by, politics, at least in the broad "cultural" sense of the term (as in, "identity politics").
Underlying the American style & theory wars of the 20th century stands a deeper, Janus-like trend : the popularization of literature (poetry). Janus-like because it involves both the expansion and thinning-out of aesthetic literacy. Everyone writes poetry but nobody knows much about its history. It's not longer produced by the few and it's no longer read by the many!
Perhaps, then, the character of one's approach to tradition is the main catalyst for producing the affiliations with particular styles or literary groups. (This is an attempt at a literary, rather than political, interpretation of such phenomena.)
I'm with Shepherd, by the way. Ideology tends to shortcut literary criticism.
12.17.2004
...thus, note carefully what Crane is saying here : the ultimate criterion of poetic value is its lastingness, the perennial quality of its beauty and interest.
If true, this should make us revise our notions of literary tradition and development. Not to say that there are not productive advances in literary forms, or that the canon is a fixed collection of past classics. (As Crane points out, Aristotle might have found King Lear a more complex & interesting example of tragic poetry than Oedipus.)
It is to say, however, that beauty is the criterion, which subsumes both pleasure & instruction. The criterion is not merely formal or aesthetic in an exclusionary sense - it's probable that ethical, moral & political values will inform our notion of the beautiful. But poetry also has its own scale of inherent expressive values - originality, elegance, rightness, clarity, eloquence, etc. - which make up the beauty of the work as a whole.
If beauty is the criterion, the critic will have to shun polemics and special pleading of every kind. Claims of novelty, "experiment", marginality, "progressiveness", political relevance, etc., are all partial claims, which - if not related to the final cause and the ultimate criterion (lasting beauty) - actually fall outside the realm of critical judgement.
With these things in mind, maybe readers can begin to distinguish for themselves between general "poetry business" (promotional activities of the entrepreneurial or socio-political kinds), and genuine criticism.
If true, this should make us revise our notions of literary tradition and development. Not to say that there are not productive advances in literary forms, or that the canon is a fixed collection of past classics. (As Crane points out, Aristotle might have found King Lear a more complex & interesting example of tragic poetry than Oedipus.)
It is to say, however, that beauty is the criterion, which subsumes both pleasure & instruction. The criterion is not merely formal or aesthetic in an exclusionary sense - it's probable that ethical, moral & political values will inform our notion of the beautiful. But poetry also has its own scale of inherent expressive values - originality, elegance, rightness, clarity, eloquence, etc. - which make up the beauty of the work as a whole.
If beauty is the criterion, the critic will have to shun polemics and special pleading of every kind. Claims of novelty, "experiment", marginality, "progressiveness", political relevance, etc., are all partial claims, which - if not related to the final cause and the ultimate criterion (lasting beauty) - actually fall outside the realm of critical judgement.
With these things in mind, maybe readers can begin to distinguish for themselves between general "poetry business" (promotional activities of the entrepreneurial or socio-political kinds), and genuine criticism.
12.16.2004
...read this review this morning. Here again is that mainstream/alternative divide, except in Britain. I like the layers of complexity the writer (David Kennedy) brings out. A review should note the provenance of the book under review, however. Not to do so seems to underline the ingrown nature of the poetry toenail.
This "binary", this divide, this line in the lime... if you started with an economic analysis of the poetry world (which Kennedy touches on), and then observed the different ways various poets, critics & reviewers manipulate that economic situation (ideologically, professionally), you'd probably come up with something resembling a pale replica or minor offshoot of the political left/right divide in general (1. capitalists, 2. workers, 3. intellectuals = 1. professional published poets, 2. unpaid "marginal/progressive" poets, 3. "critics").
Kennedy remarks on the complacency trap which both sides of the divide tend to drop into. I suppose Bourdieu & American Poetry Wax Museum have probably covered this stuff with more discourse than I could ever assimilate. The professional rewards are real (academic jobs, grants, awards, royalties, fame), on the one hand, and yet the constraints (ethical, practical, aesthetic) on poetry careerism are equally real, and this contradictory situation creates all kinds of weird phenomena in the realm of poetry's critical reception (blurbism as criticism; tactical ideology as criticism; buddy networking; etc.).
Pushkin thought poets should be treated as independent literary professionals, whose "market" is the general public - reviewers, bestowers of honorary positions, and interest claques be damned. It's a nice idea, sort of like western civilization.
This "binary", this divide, this line in the lime... if you started with an economic analysis of the poetry world (which Kennedy touches on), and then observed the different ways various poets, critics & reviewers manipulate that economic situation (ideologically, professionally), you'd probably come up with something resembling a pale replica or minor offshoot of the political left/right divide in general (1. capitalists, 2. workers, 3. intellectuals = 1. professional published poets, 2. unpaid "marginal/progressive" poets, 3. "critics").
Kennedy remarks on the complacency trap which both sides of the divide tend to drop into. I suppose Bourdieu & American Poetry Wax Museum have probably covered this stuff with more discourse than I could ever assimilate. The professional rewards are real (academic jobs, grants, awards, royalties, fame), on the one hand, and yet the constraints (ethical, practical, aesthetic) on poetry careerism are equally real, and this contradictory situation creates all kinds of weird phenomena in the realm of poetry's critical reception (blurbism as criticism; tactical ideology as criticism; buddy networking; etc.).
Pushkin thought poets should be treated as independent literary professionals, whose "market" is the general public - reviewers, bestowers of honorary positions, and interest claques be damned. It's a nice idea, sort of like western civilization.
3.14.2004
. . . but where else can poetry happen? It seems to me that everything else is deflection, evasion. If you accept "dissociation", you opt for surrealism, subconsciousness, autonomous emotion, Rebel Beat Romanticism, rhetorical expression of sentiment. . . or the Heroique image of the Infernal Intellect (Milton's Satan, Descartes, Nietzsche, Grand Inquisitor, Stalin, etc.). One or the other. Hell of a choice.
Thus we come back to a concept of Poetry which claims a sisterhood not only with Painting (the logic of feeling, sensation and emotion), but also with Philosophy (the logic of reason, communication. . . logic itself).
Thus we come back to a concept of Poetry which claims a sisterhood not only with Painting (the logic of feeling, sensation and emotion), but also with Philosophy (the logic of reason, communication. . . logic itself).
2.26.2004
Article in Providence Journal relating local clergy & rabbi responses to Gibson film. The minister, countering rabbi's wish for more emphasis on Jesus' teachings & good works, says that the important thing is the "theological statement". Quoting Isaiah ("by his stripes we are healed") he offers the standard atonement version ("it was God's will that Jesus suffer & die. That's why he was born," etc.).
The language of theology is not simple or reducible to sound bites. But this narrow "atonement" perspective troubles me. If the suffering & death were all part of God's Plan, then human free will, & the human choice to commit sin & evil, are thereby negated. This is a murky kind of absolution, a sloughing of responsibility in the name of divinely-ordained fate.
I don't think it was ever God's will that Jesus be crucified, just as it was never God's will that Cain or anyone after him commit murder. Rather, Jesus may have willingly undergone the ultimate assault of human evil (murder, represented by the Roman crucifix), trusting in God's will nevertheless, in spite of all and in the face of the end.
No, I think God's will was that Christ, enduring, defeat death and evil, a victory represented in the Resurrection. God did not design the universe as a total scapegoat process, or mechanism, in which the death of one liberates the rest of us. It's the spirit that liberates, and we are called upon to "work out our salvation" in that light.
The language of theology is not simple or reducible to sound bites. But this narrow "atonement" perspective troubles me. If the suffering & death were all part of God's Plan, then human free will, & the human choice to commit sin & evil, are thereby negated. This is a murky kind of absolution, a sloughing of responsibility in the name of divinely-ordained fate.
I don't think it was ever God's will that Jesus be crucified, just as it was never God's will that Cain or anyone after him commit murder. Rather, Jesus may have willingly undergone the ultimate assault of human evil (murder, represented by the Roman crucifix), trusting in God's will nevertheless, in spite of all and in the face of the end.
No, I think God's will was that Christ, enduring, defeat death and evil, a victory represented in the Resurrection. God did not design the universe as a total scapegoat process, or mechanism, in which the death of one liberates the rest of us. It's the spirit that liberates, and we are called upon to "work out our salvation" in that light.
The passion according to Mel opens in 2800 theaters. There's that number again. (Number of the beast!)
Myth wrapped in myth wrapped in dogma wrapped in myth.
I wonder how Rene Girard would interpret this. Iconic scapegoating serving a congruent, broader scapegoating? The Biblical message as a whole (according to Girard, anyway) demythologizes, unveils, & liberates us from the scapegoat trap (the paradigmatic action : the angel prohibits Abraham from sacrificing his own son). In the film, on the other hand, "Atonement" is once again reified into ritual mechanism, releasing waves of ill-feeling & false consciousness.
The actor playing the crucified Christ "doesn't really get killed", as children would say. Macabre travesty. "It is as it was," as the Pope says. Hmm.
Myth wrapped in myth wrapped in dogma wrapped in myth.
I wonder how Rene Girard would interpret this. Iconic scapegoating serving a congruent, broader scapegoating? The Biblical message as a whole (according to Girard, anyway) demythologizes, unveils, & liberates us from the scapegoat trap (the paradigmatic action : the angel prohibits Abraham from sacrificing his own son). In the film, on the other hand, "Atonement" is once again reified into ritual mechanism, releasing waves of ill-feeling & false consciousness.
The actor playing the crucified Christ "doesn't really get killed", as children would say. Macabre travesty. "It is as it was," as the Pope says. Hmm.
11.10.2003
Jordan & Ron on "vagueness". I commented to Ron, but I don't think I got it right either. Poetry is not "more primitive than politics". One can intepret or intuit the political aspect of any experience or situation.
I guess what always bothers me is the equation "moral high ground = poetic innovation". Morality always seems easy for the moralists; therefore it can become a function of style, the sword & shield of whole literary movements.
Undoubtedly the state of a culture - its educational & moral values & standards - will be reflected in its literary styles. But these are HARD TO READ in contemporary circumstances. How much harder to invest & bind them into literary-progressive movements.
Art & poetry are always being marshalled into somebody's scheme for world improvement. But to create an original work of art is a different & more difficult undertaking, because the work is a kind of end in itself : and AS AN END IN ITSELF it makes a statement about the nature of experience which jars with programmatic or politically-correct (in anybody's system) this-leads-to-that projects for world improvement.
None of these formulas (mine included) get it right, because we want to hear it straight from the work of art itself; we want the voice saying YES or NO to come from the poet & the poem, not the commentator. Criticism & comment are dogged by this inherent irrelevance, always talking AROUND something not yet achieved. I suppose someone has noted this constitutive flaw (in fact the deconstructionists did : but their mistake was to think that such flawed theoretical discourse was all there is).
I guess what always bothers me is the equation "moral high ground = poetic innovation". Morality always seems easy for the moralists; therefore it can become a function of style, the sword & shield of whole literary movements.
Undoubtedly the state of a culture - its educational & moral values & standards - will be reflected in its literary styles. But these are HARD TO READ in contemporary circumstances. How much harder to invest & bind them into literary-progressive movements.
Art & poetry are always being marshalled into somebody's scheme for world improvement. But to create an original work of art is a different & more difficult undertaking, because the work is a kind of end in itself : and AS AN END IN ITSELF it makes a statement about the nature of experience which jars with programmatic or politically-correct (in anybody's system) this-leads-to-that projects for world improvement.
None of these formulas (mine included) get it right, because we want to hear it straight from the work of art itself; we want the voice saying YES or NO to come from the poet & the poem, not the commentator. Criticism & comment are dogged by this inherent irrelevance, always talking AROUND something not yet achieved. I suppose someone has noted this constitutive flaw (in fact the deconstructionists did : but their mistake was to think that such flawed theoretical discourse was all there is).
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