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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re:  critics
Message-ID: <438@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 11:13:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.438
Posted: Fri Oct  4 11:13:24 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 03:17:57 EDT
References: <> <295@proper.UUCP> <250@hyper.UUCP>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 140
Summary: 

In article <250@hyper.UUCP> version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rti-sel.UUCP version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site hyper.UUCP rti-sel!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!seismo!hao!hplabs!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!houxm!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!hyper!brust brust@hyper.UUCP (Steven Brust) writes:

>> Why should a novel or a play be required to provide instant gratification in
>> some way, then to draw the reader into more profound levels of discourse?
>> This has never been required of poetry, ...
>
>It is exactly what IS required, or at least present, in
>those few of the classics that "almost all of us read."
>As I say, I know little of poetry, but are you quite sure
>of what you say here?

Before the 20th century, poetry used almost exclusively auditory
mechanisms to convey its meaning. Thus, virtually all poetry was
pleasing to the ear. This includes poetry written in the language of
the common man (e.g., Burns, Whitman, etc.). It's possible to read
all of this stuff and enjoy the surface music, I think, without really
getting into what it MEANS or how the music supports the meaning. This
is similar to the surface enjoyment one gets from listening to Mozart
(say) without knowing anything about music. 

But getting into music OR poetry at this surface level does not give
one an appreciation for what the artist is really doing. Consider the
Shakespearian sonnet (quoted from memory, so please forgive me, W. S.,
if I've mangled your poetry):

         That time of year thou may'st in me behold
         When yellow leaves, or none, do hang upon
         The bough and shake against the cold...

Read it aloud; it sounds good, doesn't it? But a surface appreciation
of the music gives you nothing of the poem's meaning: it might as well
be in Swahili. The poignancy of the poem's central metaphor, of the
poet's life considered as though it were the season of winter with the
associations with endings of things and death, and the resonance
between the fall of leaves and the fall of hair or loss of function,
and of the palsy of the aged contrasted against the palsy of the last
few leaves of the year shaking in the icy wind, comes from a careful
consideration of associations in the reader's mind as he reads this
sonnet. Finally, the reader comes to appreciate the way the music of
the poem supports the message W. S. is trying to get across.

Many (I hope most) of us are trained in school to appreciate at least
some poetry on these levels. It's WORK to read a poem this way; it's
also the way the poem was intended to be read. And a large part of the
enjoyment of a poem is seeing the different levels hang together as an
organic unit. 

Is 20th century poetry any different? A lot of it contains
considerable music, even contemporary stuff; try reading John
Ashbery's "A Wave" out loud, for example (there are also 20th century
movements whose practitioners produce poems that contain little or no
music: the concretists, for example -- check out Gene Wolfe's poem 
"Meteor" published (I think) in some anthology or other). Getting at 
the meaning can be tougher. Many contemporary poets are interested in 
the way language acts as a barrier between reality and our understanding 
of reality, for example; in his modern classic, "Crow," Ted Hughes 
uses the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for 
humanity's fall from primal innocence due to the acquisition of 
language. Should these poets avoid dealing with these issues because 
they're difficult? Should they water down the very stuff of poetry 
itself so their audiences don't have to work quite so hard to understand 
them? I personally find understanding 20th century poetry a lot of 
work, but the rewards are also considerable.

>The conclusions I have come to are, brifly summarized,
>good (fiction) writing is that which exposes and lays
>bare areas of life that are normally hidden, and does
>it in using language that can be understood.  

Agreed. But except for highly personal symbols, ALL language can be
understood; it's just a matter of the amount of work you have to put
into the understanding of the language.

>You mention
>the classics: can you name one art form (painting, music,
>etc) in which those works which are now regarded as the
>classics were not, at the time, entertainment for the
>masses?  Doesn't this indicate something?

Until fairly recently, virtually all Western art was funded by and 
produced by an educated and well-heeled elite. This tradition goes 
all the way back to the 11th and 12th century trobadours, who adopted an
anti-Church stance for the benefit of the well-educated members of the
court, NOT for the benefit of the peasantry. The only art works
produced specifically for the understanding of all society in those
days were the great cathedrals of Europe. Popular art, oral stories, and
music had little to do with the entertainments of the well-to-do
educated elite that ran society. 

As near as I can remember, drama in Shakespeare's time descended from
certain crude popular entertainments at sacred and profane festivals;
the morality plays, for example. They weren't considered 'art' by the
educated class. My recollection may be faulty in these matters, but I
think Shakespeare's generation of playwrights may have been the first
to produce entertainments that functioned on more than a crude and
superficial level as 'literature.' And Shakespeare was certainly the
best of his contemporaries. Drama may have been different than the
other arts in this regard because of its origins as an entertainment
by and for the uneducated peasantry.

Except for drama, most of the arts remained in the domain of the
educated until the European Romantic movement in the early 19th
century; Romantic poets and theoreticians like Wordsworth, Shelley,
Burns, Keats, etc. glorified the simple life of the common man and
used ordinary language in their poetry rather than the highly stylized
language prevalent in classical poetry. The Romantic movement had a
profound effect on our perception of the proper stuff of literature
and poetry, and in that sense was subversive. Walt Whitman's heroic
stance was a legacy in part of the Romantic tradition.

If you look at who was reading what poetry (and literature) well into
this century, however, I think you'll find a clear split between the
literature of the educated elite and the literature of the masses.
Most kids were taught accessible poets like Longfellow and Poe, for
example, and most working class kids quit going to school after a few
years. Volumes of 'popular poetry' abounded; we used to have one in my
parent's house. The only people reading the 'literary' contemporaries
like Eliot and Frost by and large were the people who finished high
school and went on to college: i.e., the upper middle and upper classes.

How are things different today? For one thing, the proliferation of
the paperback has made all kinds of literature more accessible to
anyone who's interested in it. Also, there's been a general spreading
of education to the general public since World War II due to the GI
Bill and the increased availability of higher education to bright 
working class kids. The presentation of opera and dramatic productions
of quality on television since the 1950s has made great art available
to anyone who has access to television. I grew up in a working class
family. It's unlikely a working-class kid like myself would have had
an opportunity to develop a taste for drama except for the fine 
productions that were put on in the 1950s. There's been a general
democratization of the availability of the arts in the last 35 years,
which is a good thing.

So I think the perception that the 'classics' were intended at the time
of their production as entertainment for the masses is based on a
faulty understanding of the history of the arts in Western society
over the last few hundred years.

                                -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly