Hi Chris
Up late again (bad sleep for the past few nights, shocking flu, fever &c
bleah) and noticed this, which I had overlooked; I also don't think the url
has been posted where that impudent gentleman Mr Chris Murray gets his hand
slapped (tsk!) Do you know him?
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4345
I see that Matthew Arnold is the keynote thinker of this particular article
("In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal
honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be
kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating
the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only
half-sound, true and untrue or only half true. It is charlatanism, conscious
or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry, more
than anywhere else, it is unpermissable to confuse or obliterate them.")
As Arnold is the acme of the imperialist poet, who thought culture had the
sacred duty above all to support the Empire, I guess this makes sense.
Culture is to Arnold the "best" that is thought and done; but who determines
that "best" is a tricky one. Eternal honor, hmmm. Is it defined by being
not-charlatanism? Or does one simply recognises such "glory" straight away,
by dazzlement, maybe? I really don't know though about the virginal quality
of poetry outlined here, unviolated by, well, anything, but looking dazedly
and gloriously out from its viewpoint high above the soiled hurly burly of
the inferior world...
There are certain canonical works that I couldn't do without. I would never
eschew Shakespeare, for instance, or various other dead white males
considered great; I like their work too much. What I would query is what
that status makes of their work - how it makes dead and oppressive cultural
momuments out of them, instead of living, dynamic and fertile works. But
how a culture ingests and neutralises works of art, and how this is
resisted, is one of the ongoing battles. Is art merely to embellish and
celebrate Authority, or is it for something else?
As for soul - I've always rather liked that Foucault definition, that a soul
is the marks and traces left by various authorities across a human psyche.
I used this idea for a monologue once, a character called Ruth, in a play
which also quoted lots of Rilke:
"They went away and then they came back and then they went away again and
then they came back. Policemen with wings like bats. An old man with the
face of a baby. The busdriver with a hacksaw. Children with teeth like
dogs. I knew what they looked like even though I never saw them. I only
heard them.
"They laughed at me. All of them.
"They took my soul and they drew all over it with their claws. Crisscross
crisscross. Teachers. Mum. The babies. The police. The judges.
Crisscross crisscross. The doctors. Dad. The lawyers. The newspapers.
The social workers. The nurses. The schoolkids. Crisscross crisscross.
And that was my soul. This poor ragged thing what everybody walked across
and tore and wrote on. They wrote everything on it. Everything. It got so
I couldnąt even read my own name. But then I remembered. I remembered at
last.
"I went down to the river to look into the water but I didnąt see nothing.
All the drowned girls came out and stood on the banks. They stood there
shivering and they said, come in, come in. But I didnąt. And they said,
Ruth, come in. And I remembered my name, and I said, no. I said, no, I
donąt want to. I remembered my name and I said no. And thatąs when the
trouble started."
But now I really am rambling. And so to bed...
Best
A
On 25/3/05 4:29 AM, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Alison--thanks for the good words. I thought the gender issue
> interesting, too. I noticed here in scanning the recent messages that
> there was some talk on Camille Paglia'a new (weak and weird) book--it
> was a quote from her intro, along with the opening line in Alyssa
> Lappen's article that caught my attention--Lappen's line is "Poetry is
> a window on the soul," and Paglia echoes that assumptive (and in my
> opinion, romanticist crap) notion. I paired up the two and wrote a
> couple of sentences taking issue with their notion of poetic
> "soul"--who's soul might it be, I wonder, and who's notion of "the"
> soul?--on my blog. That seems to be what irritated this _American
> Thinker_ editor, since he tried to reaffirm the notion by starting his
> own 'hateful' editorial by requoting it with great reverence. Sheesh!
> Now we cannot even debate historicized notions of what poetry might be
> with coming under right wing ridicule and attack.
>
> But then, too: it's good to clear the air somewhat with these crackpot
> thinkers, so, yeah: let's just call what they're trying to pass off as
> defensible, reasonable argument, just plain old, same old, *bullshit*.
>
> :)
>
> best,
> c
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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