On 1 Apr 2004 at 2:33, Christina Fletcher wrote:
> Dunno, H. Depends on the definition of rhetoric and that's precisely
> the problem I'm having with this and the other traditional sonnets.
> The voice is artificial. Is this a bad thing? Well, yes, it probably
> is.<
Well, no, it definitely isn't. All voices are artificial -- if
they're art at all. Art is artifice, a made thing, an artificed
thing, an artificial thing. The very notion that a poem can "be
natural" is absurd. The best you can do is to create the illusion of
naturalness by artificial means -- by picking this word instead of
that, this phrase instead of that, this tone or manner or mode or
style instead of that.
|