> A bit like that quote
> of Pasternak's - "a poet must be free of opinion, especially his own".
>
Wonderful quote, Alison, absolutely wonderful.
Yours in Stupidity
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: Back on Planet Earth
> Hi Candice
>
> I didn't take it that David was valorising little r romantic idiocy
> either. The quote comes from a rather testy interview called "Poets
> Have To Be Stupid" published in the Semiotext(e) book "Germania".
> The interview itself is pretty funny.
>
> "HEINER: Now we're back at the abysmal. You're constantly trying to
> unmask me. That's why you're doing this interview. You shine this
> flashlight on someone from your own abyss, and when there is nothing
> you think he is unserious. In the end, your line of thought will
> lead you to Plato's exile of the poet. Plato wished for a
> philosopher state where there would not be any poets.
>
> ANDRE: Because they're too stupid?
>
> HEINER: Exactly, that's what he meant. And he was absolutely right.
> Stupidity is a prerequisite for poets. I am a good example of this.
> I just don't have the compulsion to think about anything. Maybe I
> have too little fear. Philosophy is a product of fear, like
> religion. One attempts to establish values when it isn't a question
> of values at all, but of fear.
>
> ....
>
> ANDRE: Why do you so seldom tell the truth?
>
> HEINER: Because the truth requires the most imagination. And I am
> no documentarist. What I write is always fiction and truth. A
> combination between document and fiction. I find something and raise
> it to a poetic form to create a distance. When I read it, it seems
> like a dead man's text to me."
>
> If anything, it shows that Muller is not himself stupid, whatever he
> says - but he rejects outright a number of things (his favourite
> phrase is "I'm not interested"). He does however value something
> else, which I cogitate as a kind of freedom. A bit like that quote
> of Pasternak's - "a poet must be free of opinion, especially his own".
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>
> >
> >But who knows what Muller meant, absent original context and language.
> >(Alison, can you fill those in?)
> >
> >Candice
> >
> >
> >> I'm afraid I can't think of any sense of the word 'stupid' which would
> >> be a necessary quality of a poet. I think Muller's statement is
stupid.
> >>
> >> Or perhaps I'm being stupid.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> --
> >> Peter
> >>
> >> http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
>
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Home page
> http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
> Masthead
> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
|