For my money, by far the best answers to the question "what is pastoral for"
are given in Paul Alpers, _What is Pastoral_?
JD Fleming
On Sat, 7 Jun 2008 12:14:34 -0400 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Several years ago, I organized an online discussion of Virgil's
> Eclogues; we got through #5. If anyone's curious, the record of our
> conversation is still available here:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eclogues/messages/1. Last spring I tried
> again, with some undergraduates. We finished this time, in the sense
> that we read all ten poems. But I didn't feel that we'd got IN, if you
> know what I mean, and I was grateful when we moved on to the Georgics.
>
> This summer, I'm trying the Eclogues again, and I'd like to share
> something that's bugging me, in hope that someone can set me my feet
> back on the path of righteousness. Are you ready for it? Virgil's
> Eclogues (and Spenser's SC) are all about poetry. How very meta! (Q: Why
> are University of Chicago students smarter than Harvard students? A:
> Everything Harvard can do, Chicago can do meta.) What's wrong with that?
> There are, it seems to me, at least two objections which meta-poetry is
> open to:
>
> 1. It has no content. A dog chasing his own tale is fun to watch, but he
> can't really eat it. To change the metaphor, it's sterile. To change the
> metaphor again, it's cut off from real life.
>
> 2. Sure, there is no "singing school but studying / Monuments of its own
> magnificence." But that (the art world of Byzantium) is no country for
> young men. What do young men -- the kind who are supposed to write
> pastoral -- know about poetry? Who but a young poet would write twaddle
> like this? "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's
> affections and the truth of the Imagination." Oh please. Double oh
> please. License to spew thee out of my mouth. The heart is deceitful
> above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?
>
> Before I go on, let me say this in favor of youth. If you read English
> history, you get the impression that having a boy king is a bad thing.
> But if you read Bible history, a boy king can be wonderful, especially
> when you need a reformer (like Josiah). Young people are willing to rock
> the boat. They don't measure (because they haven't experienced yet) the
> real cost of their actions. They aren't invested yet in the status quo.
> They can be uncompromising, because they haven't themselves been
> compromised yet by the World. They wield a terrible, SWIFT sword. That
> kind of thing terrifies old men -- terrifies and shames them.
>
> This doesn't explain, though, why young people should be drawn to one of
> the harder tasks there is in poetry, which writing pastoral is. First,
> you have to master the low/thin/paired-down style. That's hard.
> Shakespeare could do it ("Never, never, never"), but not until his
> forties. Second, if poetry is going to be your subject, you have to know
> something about poetry that is worth saying. On the one hand, the world
> of poetry seems brave to young people, because it is new to them; that's
> something. On the other hand, while they may be passionate about Poetry,
> they usually haven't read very many poems; their tastes tend to be
> narrow. Mine were, anyway. If it wasn't romantic/Romantic, I wasn't
> interested. Satire was lost on me. I liked comedy, but I didn't value
> it. Which brings me back to problem #2, what do young people know about
> poetry?
>
> O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
> English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
> East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
James Dougal Fleming
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
cell: 604-290-1637
Nicht deines, einer Welt.
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