Well, there can be great pleasure in watching a virtuoso at work. Even if it
is finally unsatisfying. At least it's never embarrassing. (On the other
hand, one must risk embarrassment - but that's another question altogether -
there are those poets who huddle under the parapet playing cards or doing
embroidery, smugly sure that they will never trip head over arse into folly)
-
It's hard to know about Olivier; that kind of acting looks inevitably old
fashioned now. And given that all that's left is videos and written
accounts, and that videos can never - or very very very seldom - capture
what an actor can do in the theatre, it's impossible to know what he was
like. My father saw Olivier do Macbeth at Stratford and never forgot it. I
will never know what he experienced, because I wasn't there (which is the
great beauty of theatre, since it is inescapably ephemeral and
unrecordable). But my father always spoke of that experience with great
feeling, and I'd suggest that something rather more than virtuosity was
happening there.
My personal preference (in both poetry and theatre) is for the kind of
emotional rawness and depth that can only be attained with great skill and
intelligence (and honesty, hence my dislike of sincerity). Blake, Rimbaud,
Lorca, HD, Tsetaeyeva, well, dozens of others.
All best
A
On 6/7/07, Caleb Cluff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >>>>"If a poet has something besides themselves and their gift to share
> with us".
>
> Exactly. It was the criticism, to draw in Alison's actorly analogy, of
> Olivier. Brilliant. Impressive. But eventually: to what end, other than
> to display the actor's brilliance? Which is not sincerity, of course.
> That's rather akin to pissing on the stage.
>
> Objectivity, then. There's absolutely nothing wrong with feeling. I'd
> like to feel more, and less, and clearly. I'd like to be able to love
> better, and hate less. Admirable, everyday feelings. But they have
> nothing to do with writing poetry, at least as it works for me. If one
> can't detach their sincere, heartfelt impressions from language, they
> have a career at Hallmark. But making language ride the feeling - isn't
> that nearer? And nearer, surely, is all we ever get.
>
> 'Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
> And my next self thou harder hast engrossed:
> Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;
> A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed.'
>
> Sonnet 133.
>
> Caleb
>
>
>
>
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--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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