The "government" might also consider engaging "poetry discouragers", people
who sidle around in areas like this one, say, and more or less subtly put
the others off actually writing any thing (hey! isn't that what
actually...ssh...), thus not only increasing the market value of the poetry
that still succeeds in emerging but also its quality ( if the challenge
and/or evolutionary theory of civilisation is true...). Wolfgang
Hildesheimer presents us with a "historical" exemplar of the species in the
figure of Pilz, who succeeds in discouraging a variety of German artists
including Beethoven for a number of years. (To be found in _Lieblose
Legenden_ - don't know if it's been translated. Hildesheimer was a less
"heavyweight" combination of Kafka, Borges and Nabokov - the latter two
avant la lettre of course, as far as post-war Germany was concerned until
the 60s.) It is true, isn't it, that there was a quantum leap in
Beethoven's later work? And one of the tragedies of literary history is Ben
Jonson's groan of failure with respect to his attempts with
Shakespeare:"Would he had blotted a thousand!"
Cheers, Martin
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|