Interesting post, Roger. I love 'people are amnesia machines'
>At the back of my head is the idea of re-inventing England as a
Republic.<
Interesting facts about England:
a) it does not have a national anthem (GSQ is the national anthem of the UK)
b) it does not have a capital (London, or rather Westminster, is the capital
of the UK)
c) legally, it does not exist. The entity is called England and Wales.
Of course Shakespeare is an artifact and compounded of sludge. Flat
characterisations? You bet - he's full of stage villains and stage fools -
anyone looking for psychological depth is looking in the wrong place. The
proto-nationalism if applied to modern times is dodgy, although to be fair
by the standards of his times he's rather humane, just say as Dickens was.
But the language can be thrilling (it can also be prolix, bombastic or just
dull when the spark fails). Some of plays, too, have supplied template
patterns that have triggered other artists over and over again in all sorts
of media, from musicals and sci-fi to art fims and opera. And to go back to
the characterisations, yes, they are often simple: Octavian is cold,
Falstaff fat and hedonistic, Hamlet a riddle etc etc yet these simple
'templates' are time and time again invested with a tinge of humanity that
convinces on stage (which is, after all, what they were meant to do).
>In my Republic Of England, S would be of as little import as the next
writer. He would have to earn his crust along with the rest of the
dead and live poets and playwrights. At least there would not be this
huge inbuilt life-support mechanism that looks to me akin to keeping
the dead alive and/or necrophilia in certain cases.<
Yes and no. I see your point but can't help thinking that there is
something, albeit unwittingly, of the savour of frre-market aesthetics in
that.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: Poem/Play (was Re: Pinter on Blair et al.)
Uh-uh. Poets repeat old tropes every day, unconsciously regurgigating
old poems in new ways. People are amnesia machines so we do re-invent
the wheel, we have to! Of course, you may say that we may fool
ourselves in to thinking it's a completely original thing that's being
invented - everything has it's antecedents - but I think that this
power of creation, this feeling that you own the creation, that it's a
new bright shiny toy is a feature not a bug! It's your dreams that
you're creating not someone elses so I think you're entitled to feel
some ownership. I'm not against going to the past, learning etc etc.
At no point am I advocating a complete break from the past; all poets
have to earn their chops, I think they should do it a little more
sceptically, a little more awareness of dominant discourses etc.
At the back of my head is the idea of re-inventing England as a
Republic. S is an obstacle to me. For me Australia is one of those
country that represents something of an inkling of what an
English-speaking republic might be like, particularly if Australia
breaks the chains, so I'm disappointed when I find Australian poets
binding themselves enthusiastically into European models. I'm
beginning to think I'll be eternally disappointed. So to me, giant
embedded cultural artifacts like Shakespeare clutter up the field of
creativity for a new mode (oh, I can hear Alison sharpening yet more
examples to prove me wrong!) and once in their shadow will always bind
you into the dominant mode of discourse.I don't think you can separate
the establishment and the radical in the current discourse. Being
"radical" in the shadow of Shakespeare to me only feeds the
Shakespeare artifact; yet more sludge to step around. I think people
like the futurists did just that: they took a step around the cultural
artifacts that stood in their way; certainly it's a possible way
forward, maybe not.
In my Republic Of England, S would be of as little import as the next
writer. He would have to earn his crust along with the rest of the
dead and live poets and playwrights. At least there would not be this
huge inbuilt life-support mechanism that looks to me akin to keeping
the dead alive and/or necrophilia in certain cases. He might still be
a genius after that; he may not. As for Shakespeare the writer, I
think you'll find the answer in this list:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sherbooke/2005/12/04/, so I admit to
loving at least a couple of his plays as a callow youth. S the writer
I can take or leave, his "genius" to me being more a product of his
time rather than any particular genius of his own, whoever he was,
with his flat characterisations (oh, yet more examples flying to pen!)
and his dodgy proto-nationalism. Of course, you may try and persuade
me o'wise, *shrug*. I think you should ask yourself why you are
seeking so earnestly to persuade me - or anyone else - of his genius.
Shouldn't it be self-evident?
I note that the thread has turned from discussing plays to me not
liking Shakespeare. I also note I'll never get the last word ;->
Umm, I might start reading some more Tolstoy.
Roger
On 12/13/05, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hmm. Surely forgetting history only condemns one to repeat it, and is the
> surest way of binding yourself to that old wheel... I suppose a good
example
> of immersion in tradition spawning innovation is Rimbaud, who was very
good
> (he won prizes) at writing alexandrines in Latin. I seriously doubt that
he
> could have sustained his startling innovations without the prosodic
> intelligence he gained through such exercises.
>
> Roger, you have every right to loathe Shakespeare, but I do think it's a
bit
> mysterious, since your reason seems merely to be that he's basically an
> "establishment" writer, which seems to me more a reaction to the cult of
WS
> than to the work itself. You might try reading Jonathan Dollimore's
"Radical
> Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His
> Contemporaries", which I see has just been republished with a forward by
> Terry Eagleton. - It might be interesting to know, more specifically, what
> it is that you object to in his work.
>
> Tolstoy loathed Shakespeare too (Tolstoy's critique of Lear is somewhat
> hilarious, especially if you try to read Tolstoy's own appalling attempts
at
> drama), and WS was sternly upbraided by Dryden for being far too messy and
> unclassical a writer; and didn't Green attack WS during his lifetime for
> being an uneducated upstart, a crow with borrowed feathers or somesuch?
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>
> On 13/12/05 11:47 PM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Wheels come in many shapes sizes and forms, some almost looking like
> > tank tracks. Isn't it fun to discover how to make a *new wheel? At
> > least it would be *your wheel. Far better I would have thought than
> > chaining yourself to that old one...
> >
> > Byee
> >
> > R
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
--
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