Following Robert Archambeau's "modernity is disinterest" thread. Sceptical about the distinction between Western & Middle Eastern (Islamic) thinking. The idea of some kind of M-E unitary or indivisible mentality sounds suspiciously like earlier Western imaginings of the "noble savage". The Other is always greener on the other side of the fence.
The divisions & splits between (ethical) self and (social) role seem inherent to moral dilemmas of every kind, in every culture. One could just as easily talk about the traditionalist-tribal fathers who kill their own daughters in order to maintain archaic Arab "honor" codes. One can imagine quite a psychic split there between self & social role.
Mazzotta's book on Vico, which I've mentioned previously here, is focused on Vico's challenge to modernity (in the shape of Descartes, Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes). The argument of The New Science (to oversimplify) is that poetry, as imaginative (re)making, presents an image of world-renewal, based on wonder & creativity, which is at odds with the disenchanted, utilitarian, and arrogant realpolitik/scientism presented by those avatars of Modern "disinterest" & detachment. At odds with them - but aligned with Dante (Mazzotta's other hero).
Showing posts with label modernity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label modernity. Show all posts
12.15.2005
7.18.2003
Rain falling in Providence. Time on my hands tonight.
Read an article somewhere stating that the ancients (BC, roughly) had a different spatial concept of time. The future was behind them, physically, spatially; in front of them was the past, shining, complete; the future accumulated as they walked into the past, followed the patterns laid down.
If we think of new developments in poetry in this ancient sense, what do we see? The brilliance of the great Moderns, the second thoughts of those who followed.
I can't think of the Moderns except in the context of civilizational crisis. Poetry = seismic reading; response to disequilibrium. (Psychological, as I wrote somewhere in the archives : poetry a reaction, an antidote, to tremors of adolescence.) It was WW I (& decadence preceding) that spurred Pound & Eliot to look over the shoulders of the Victorians, to the whole sweep of the past. Longfellow & Tennyson & Browning did same; but they didn't , as the Moderns did, unite an obsessive grasping after classical models, with a stylistic extremity, which overthrew any simple or assumed continuity with same. This was a purely 20th-cent phenomenon.
What this meant for US poetry, though, was defined by a particular decision : were you an American, or an expatriate? Stevens & Williams on one side, Pound & Eliot on the other. There were political underpinnings : an American was a democrat; an expat was a monarchist or aristocrat. Never mind for a moment the complications : Eliot's intuitive grasp of the middle, Pound's intuitive awareness of the low, Williams's status (like Dante, in an odd way) as immigrant-outsider, Stevens's very American macho businessman snobbery (the independent CEO, no academic "bought man"). These are side issues to the pivotal question : does US democracy inaugurate a verifiable new civilization, a new reality, a Novus Ordo Seclorum (fun to read Rabid's de Tocqueville quotes)?
Read an article somewhere stating that the ancients (BC, roughly) had a different spatial concept of time. The future was behind them, physically, spatially; in front of them was the past, shining, complete; the future accumulated as they walked into the past, followed the patterns laid down.
If we think of new developments in poetry in this ancient sense, what do we see? The brilliance of the great Moderns, the second thoughts of those who followed.
I can't think of the Moderns except in the context of civilizational crisis. Poetry = seismic reading; response to disequilibrium. (Psychological, as I wrote somewhere in the archives : poetry a reaction, an antidote, to tremors of adolescence.) It was WW I (& decadence preceding) that spurred Pound & Eliot to look over the shoulders of the Victorians, to the whole sweep of the past. Longfellow & Tennyson & Browning did same; but they didn't , as the Moderns did, unite an obsessive grasping after classical models, with a stylistic extremity, which overthrew any simple or assumed continuity with same. This was a purely 20th-cent phenomenon.
What this meant for US poetry, though, was defined by a particular decision : were you an American, or an expatriate? Stevens & Williams on one side, Pound & Eliot on the other. There were political underpinnings : an American was a democrat; an expat was a monarchist or aristocrat. Never mind for a moment the complications : Eliot's intuitive grasp of the middle, Pound's intuitive awareness of the low, Williams's status (like Dante, in an odd way) as immigrant-outsider, Stevens's very American macho businessman snobbery (the independent CEO, no academic "bought man"). These are side issues to the pivotal question : does US democracy inaugurate a verifiable new civilization, a new reality, a Novus Ordo Seclorum (fun to read Rabid's de Tocqueville quotes)?
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