Dear Kevin,
     1. Might we theorize an incomplete hermeneutic circle? How can we
interpret an individual line when there is no (complete) "whole" in which to
contextualize it?
     2. On the other hand, quite often incompletion is strategic, I think.
Drayton's _Poly-Olbion_ is also unfinished, the second installment ending at
the border of Scotland instead of encompassing all of the newly conceived
Great Britain as its original plan calls for. Drayton's poem is part of a
long line of unfinished epics, stretching from Virgil's Aeneid and
Lucretius's De Rerum Natura to Spenser's Faerie Queene (pace Susanne Woods)
and on to Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu and Pound's Cantos.
 Sometimes these epic incompletions serve some ideological or formal end.
The darkness with which Virgil's poem "ends" calls into question the
Augustan regime the poem supposedly lauds. The Seventh Book of The Faerie
Queene is "unperfite" for a different reason: because on the seventh day God
rested and Spenser sets up his poem as an imitation of the divine creation.
The infinality of Proust's epic in prose suggests the ongoing stream of
time, the incomplete state of recaptured memory, even the fractured post-war
world. Drayton's poem, too, I argue, makes a statement in its closing, both
in its incompletion and the way it becomes unfinished: stopping on the south
side of the Scottish border is Drayton's revenge on James for not
patronizing him. (Balachandra Rajan has a book on this topic (which you
probably already know), _The Form of the Unfinished: English Poetics from
Spenser to Pound_ (Princeton, 1985).)
     3. But to tackle your specific question while also giving an example of
the problem, let me quote an isolated passage from Pope's _Essay on
Criticism_:
     In Wit, as Nature, what affects our Hearts
     Is not th' Exactness of peculiar Parts;
     'Tis not a Lip, or Eye, we Beauty call,
     But the joint Force and full Result of all.
     Thus when we view some well-proportion'd Dome,
     (The World's just Wonder, and ev'n thine O Rome!)
     No single parts unequally surprize;
     All comes united to th' admiring eyes;
     No monstrous Height, or Breadth, or Length appear;
     The Whole at once is Bold, and Regular.
Pope is of course wise as usual, but as you suggest he seems to be
describing the _Commedia_, not _The Faerie Queene_. Your question: is it
somehow wrong to admire "th' Exactness of peculiar Parts"? (I know . . .
 now we're back to the beginning of the circle.)
Yours,
Brad

On Wed, 14 May 2008 02:11:46 -0400
  Kevin Farnham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have thought a lot about the recent discussion about how difficult it
>has been for some artists to "finish" individual works. This implies a flaw
>where the work itself is not adequately designed as a whole, whose
>structure itself amplifies the meaning imparted by the individual
>subsections of the work.
>
> I would select the Commedia as a work where the entire structure is
>consistent with and amplifies the import of each subsection. With Spenser,
>and many others -- they seemed to write, and to be able to create beautiful
>lines and sentences, but the "inability to end" results in them almost not
>really having works that can be called "complete".
>
> The Shepheardes Calendar has a structure, certainly. Epithalamion too.
>Both of these impose time-related constraints. It seems to me that Spenser
>had an excellent plan in his design of the Faerie Queene, but to me he
>didn't really follow through. By the end, a hero in the book was actually
>trying to leap out of FQ, having been lured by the call of lyric poetry. So
>it seems to me, anyway...
>
> The question is: how much of a deficiency is this? Is the insight in a
>single verse what matters most? Quotations from Horace and Shakespeare
>become commonplace sayings and influence society for centuries to come. Is
>the brilliant line what matters most, or is the interior consistency of a
>large-scale work the best measure of artistic genius and success?
>
> By nature, I'd argue the latter, but ... I too have often posted brief
>snippet quotes near my work area, as though they encapsulated a very
>complete representation of the meaning and significance of a work, or even
>an artist's entire vision.
>
> Does anyone on the list want to offer an opinion on this?