Thank you, Joe, for this quote and attention to
Grotowski. I see what you mean about his language (and
issues) relating to poetry. Dylan Thomas does
something similar in _Under Milkwood_, as someone on
the list pointed out. Then again, there's Henry James,
who yearned for notoriety with his ghastly plays.
I still feel that an actor's art is secondary to
poetry, although I've begun to return to my first love
and rely on theatre to "ground" my poetry. (I was a
theatre major as an undergraduate.)
Candice
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Well, I found this:
>
> "Theater - through the actor's technique, his art in
> which the living organism strives for higher motives
> - provides an opportunity for what could be called
> integration, the discarding of masks, the revealing
> of the real substance: a totality of physical and
> mental reactions. This opportunity must be treated
> in a disciplined manner, with a full awareness of
> the responsibilities it involves. Here we can see
> the theatre's therapeutic function for people in our
> present day civilization. It is true that the actor
> accomplishes this act, but he can only do so through
> an encounter with the spectator - intimately,
> visibly, not hiding behind a cameraman, wardrobe
> mistress, stage designer or make-up girl - in direct
> confrontation with him, and somehow " instead of"
> him. The actor's act - discarding half measures,
> revealing, opening up, emerging from himself as
> opposed to closing up - is an invitation to the
> spectator. This act could be compared to an act of
> the most deeply rooted,
> genuine love between two human beings - this is
> just a comparison since we can only refer to this
> "emergence from oneself" through analogy. This act,
> paradoxical and borderline, we call a total act. In
> our opinion it epitomizes the actor's deepest
> calling. From 'Towards a Poor Theatre' by
> Grotowski[1]"
>
> And if you think of poetry as an invitation to a
> reader and an encounter with the reader and
> understand poetry as not hiding behind ideology and
> as revealing and opening up something that manages
> to be there in spite of all the powers that want to
> suppress that then I think his idea of theater fits
> with my idea of poetry, He's just a lot more
> articulate and intelligent than I am..
>
> MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Where does
> Gratowsky (sp?) fit in?
>
> Candice
>
>
>
> --- joe green wrote:
>
> > "This is excellently put. The solution, in
> > political poetry, is
> > Brechtian "alienation": objectivity, or what
> appears
> > to
> > be objectivity, where the reader expects pathos."
> >
> >
> >
> > Or pathos where the reader expects alienation and
> > the usual effects.
> >
> > The point is that a good poem is what remains
> after
> > encountering or
> > ignoring or transcending all systems that exist to
> > prevent its existence.
> > As Eliot said, the poem is judged by every other
> > poem out there.
> > It can be a unique instance only because it
> > encounters the uniqueness
> > of everything else. That also means it can, more
> or
> > less do exactly what
> > another good poem does and in the same way if it
> is
> > true that it can do
> > so because the other poems exist in the same mode
> > of overcoming – that
> > those instances have not been exhausted. At a
> > certain point a “sentimental”
> > poem can be a real poem – overcoming ironies and
> so
> > on – but only if all
> > that resists it is somehow overcome.
> >
> >
> >
> > The poetry of sincerity is exhausted just because
> > its opposite is never
> > really encountered. The poetry of alienation has
> > more going for it
> > since alienation implies something that is seen
> as
> > necessary to
> > overcome. And there are emotions that are not
> > banal – grief.
> > But how to overcome just the usual utterance?
> > Poetry that doesn’t want to encounter emotion and
> > instead
> > to claim that it exists in some abstract
> mode--such
> > as
> > LangPo does—and still wants to make a pretension
> to
> > significance
> > and meaning utterly baffles me. Why should I care
> > when I could
> > be reading King Lear?
> >
> > I love Ulysses and Finnegans Wake just because the
> > more
> > I read and discover the more I see to discover.
> > I’m delighted with a “difficult” text but only if
> > there is something there
> > – not banal utterance tricked up a la mode.
> >
> > I love scholarship and have spent many days
> > bellycrawling
> > through libraries to, for example, discover if
> > Shakespeare
> > could have known what was meant by a “Republic”
> in
> > the
> > sense it was understood just 100 years later etc
> > etc but nothing
> > is more pointless than the classification and
> > placing
> > of poets in schools. Wordsworth, for example, a
> > poet sincere.
> > Matt Arnold reading him for beauty and rest.
> >
> >
> > But you read his great poems and discover that
> > a central trope is nothingness, desolation,
> > impossibility of knowing,
> > vacancy etc coupled with the great insistence that
> > all of this can
> > be overcome. This insistence continually
> betrayed.
> > No closure. Not conscious irony but a real poet
> > encountering
> > the opposite of what he wants to mean and even
> doing
> > so never really
> > seeing that in his own poems.
> >
> >
> >
> > Look at the Ascent of the Alps..Book 6 of the
> > Prelude.
> >
> > Wordsworth anticipates ascending to the top.
> > Ah, that’s where the Sublime is!.
> > And …then:
> >
> >
> > "That from the torrent's further brink held forth
> > Conspicuous invitation to ascend
> > A lofty mountain. After brief delay
> > Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,
> > And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears
> > Intruded, for we failed to overtake
> > Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,
> > While every moment added doubt to doubt,
> > A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned
> > That to the spot which had perplexed us first
> > Wemust descend, and there should find the road,
> > Which in the stony channel of the stream
> > Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;
> > And, that our future course, all plain to sight,
> > Was downwards, with the current of that stream.
> > Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,
> > For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,
> > We questioned him again, and yet again;
> > But every word that from the peasant's lips
> > Came in reply, translated by our feelings,
> > Ended in this,--'that we had crossed the Alps'.
> >
> >
> > Ha! So what do you do? He never noticed that
> he
> > was at the top—missed the Sublime. Admits this….
> >
> > And then this attempt at recovery!
> >
> >
> >
> > Imagination--here the Power so called
> > Through sad incompetence of human speech,
> > That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss
> > Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
> > At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
> > Halted without an effort to break through;
> > But to my conscious soul I now can say--
> > "I recognise thy glory:" in such strength
> > Of usurpation, when the light of sense …
>
> >
> >
> > Lost, lonely, abyss, usurpation all words that
> again
> > and again betray what he wants to assert.
>
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