"Mandelstam maintains that "he (Dante) does not introduce one word of
his own... he takes dictation, he is a copyist, he is a translator...
" ... Only a poet who has known from his own inner experience the
categoricalness of the inner voice could say this. From the cited
quote it follows that in poetic work no arbitrariness, no invention,
no fantasy is conceivable. All these ideas Mandelstam relegated to
the negative rank: "Dante and fantasy - after all, the two are
incompatible!" ... Fantasy and invention yield a fictive product -
fiction, literature - but not poetry."
(From_Mozart and Salieri_ by Nadezhda Mandelstam)
Which makes me think of William Burroughs' comment about how language
can deceive the writer, and wondering whether, if Mandelstam is
correct (and I'm not certain he is) it is true that poetry of the
"inner voice" would then make the seductiveness of deception
impossible. Hmmm?
Any thoughts?
Best
Alison
--
"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
Albert Camus
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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