Among the classics, Hesiod belongs next to Homer, controverting your proposal that poetry has nothing to do with labor conferring a universal eligibility to be noble. Lost Greek lyric poetry is still felt through Horace and his successors. I am happy to agree that Catullus is a seminal figure, despite his conventional placement among les petits maîtres. Beyond that, the Greeks set the tone for drama and comedy, just as the Jews do for worship. None of this excuses us from reckoning the moderns. Dante and Petrarch inaugurate historical modernity. Baudelaire and Mallarmé define its aesthetic counterpart. The distinction in genres is a red herring. Lyricism never prevented translation. I grant that formal involvement in language impedes foreign rendition. It can even impede native understanding of provincial poets invested into their dialects, in contrast with their official competitors comprehensible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the majority of authors in my list are lyrical poets. Only Dante and Milton authored true epics. The sweep of King Lear and Faust might serve as a metaphorical pass into the epic genre. But the sonnets of Shakespeare and the lieder of Goethe resonate on the world stage, if not nearly as much as their dramatic productions. Petrarch is the quintessential modern lyricist of the old school, heir to Horace, Ovid, and Catullus in every relevant sense. Whereas Baudelaire and Mallarmé preempt the poetic obstruction postulated by Theodore Adorno in the wake of Auschwitz. In their aftermath, it is no longer necessary to associate lyric poetry with the lyre used to flatter a king or woo a wench. Their differences are telling. On one end of the spectrum reside “hypocrite lecteur” and “mon enfant, ma sœur,” as familiar to a middlebrow frog as “ripeness is all” and “sound and fury” are to his limey and yank counterparts. On the other end subsist exquisitely wrought puzzles far more forbidding to the reader expecting instant gratification in his native tongue, than they might be to an educated foreigner accustomed to defamiliarization from surface meanings. The disparity in influence reflects this distinction. What French poetic successor of note escaped an imprint of Les Fleurs du mal? Whereas just in the Anglophone realm, of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, each easily measures up to Paul Valéry in his capacity as the greatest French epigone of Mallarmé. My explanation of my prophet lacking honor in his own country supports the claim for his profound universality. Carlo Ginzburg (“Making Things Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device,” Representations 56, Fall 1996, pp. 8-28, reprinted in Wooden Eyes) traces Shklovsky’s defamiliarization via Leo Tolstoy to the writings of Marcus Aurelius. A more obvious trace connects it via Roman Jakobson to the riddles of Mallarmé. International acclaim of Russian formalism should have enabled it to propagate Russian poetry in the West. Its failure to do so is telling. For now, I wish all the best for your effort to try and build an escape chute, especially for want of any such passage in Russian poetry between the imperial encomia of Lomonosov and the products of the Evil Empire.
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Re: thank you for an incisive lesson
Date: 2005-09-09 06:38 pm (UTC)None of this excuses us from reckoning the moderns. Dante and Petrarch inaugurate historical modernity. Baudelaire and Mallarmé define its aesthetic counterpart. The distinction in genres is a red herring. Lyricism never prevented translation. I grant that formal involvement in language impedes foreign rendition. It can even impede native understanding of provincial poets invested into their dialects, in contrast with their official competitors comprehensible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the majority of authors in my list are lyrical poets. Only Dante and Milton authored true epics. The sweep of King Lear and Faust might serve as a metaphorical pass into the epic genre. But the sonnets of Shakespeare and the lieder of Goethe resonate on the world stage, if not nearly as much as their dramatic productions. Petrarch is the quintessential modern lyricist of the old school, heir to Horace, Ovid, and Catullus in every relevant sense. Whereas Baudelaire and Mallarmé preempt the poetic obstruction postulated by Theodore Adorno in the wake of Auschwitz. In their aftermath, it is no longer necessary to associate lyric poetry with the lyre used to flatter a king or woo a wench. Their differences are telling. On one end of the spectrum reside “hypocrite lecteur” and “mon enfant, ma sœur,” as familiar to a middlebrow frog as “ripeness is all” and “sound and fury” are to his limey and yank counterparts. On the other end subsist exquisitely wrought puzzles far more forbidding to the reader expecting instant gratification in his native tongue, than they might be to an educated foreigner accustomed to defamiliarization from surface meanings. The disparity in influence reflects this distinction. What French poetic successor of note escaped an imprint of Les Fleurs du mal? Whereas just in the Anglophone realm, of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, each easily measures up to Paul Valéry in his capacity as the greatest French epigone of Mallarmé.
My explanation of my prophet lacking honor in his own country supports the claim for his profound universality. Carlo Ginzburg (“Making Things Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device,” Representations 56, Fall 1996, pp. 8-28, reprinted in Wooden Eyes) traces Shklovsky’s defamiliarization via Leo Tolstoy to the writings of Marcus Aurelius. A more obvious trace connects it via Roman Jakobson to the riddles of Mallarmé. International acclaim of Russian formalism should have enabled it to propagate Russian poetry in the West. Its failure to do so is telling. For now, I wish all the best for your effort to try and build an escape chute, especially for want of any such passage in Russian poetry between the imperial encomia of Lomonosov and the products of the Evil Empire.