An old colleague of mine, out of Cambridge but no simple leavisian, when Shelley
was mentioned, would crumple and emote:
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
The devaluations of both Milton and Shelley that I recall were often focussed
very scrupulously on their diction.
William Empson was not on the right.
Just random first comments, excuse scrappiness.
in haste,
Max
Quoting David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
> As a critic/teacher Davie hada very interesting career: from being a
> supporter of Larkin he became a mentor of Tom Raworth, if I remember
> correctly. He did write a short poem in his The Shires sequence which
> mentions the Leicester Poetry Society at mention ing which people's interest
> will perk, unfortunately I have to wince inwardly when mentioning it to
> advertise the group as the poem's also little more than doggerel.
>
> The problem with 20th century evaluations of Milton and Shelley in
> particular is disentangling critiques of elements of their diction with the
> fact that both were political poets and of their time precursors of the
> modern left while their arch-detractors like Pound and Eliot (explicitly)
> and Leavis (implicitly) were very much of the right wing. I'd hasten to add
> that I don't know what Leavis's actual political affiliations were, but his
> nostalgic harking back to the organic village is as conservative as,say,the
> avowedly anti-democrat Catholic Tolkein.
>
> 2009/7/14 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > I think Davie was hard at work in academic English widening the canon that
> > had
> > been narrowed by Leavis's Revaluation (1936), which was so hard on Shelley
> > and
> > Milton and ...
> >
> > Whatever Davie's achievement as poet, his criticism wherever I have sampled
> > it
> > has an energy and often relish about it that engages me ...
> >
> > Max
> >
> > Quoting David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
> >
> > > I never did read it when young and it has been a pleasure to do so now,
> > I've
> > > also looked back at a lot of Shelley that I did find exciting when 14 and
> > am
> > > rather thrilled that I can still feel those pinions beating in, say, the
> > > Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. It's as valid of its age as Beethoven
> > sonatas
> > > or the slightly later Chopin. I can almost feel wooden ships at anchor,
> > hear
> > > their timbers creaking.
> > >
> > > Yes, Julian and Maddalo does have a calmer voice in the narrator, its
> > rather
> > > like a foretaste of Clough there, with the more Gothic and wilder Shelley
> > in
> > > the voice of the madman. it's very kind of as puny a poet as Donald Davie
> > to
> > > condescend to pat him on the head.
> > >
> > > 2009/7/9 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> > >
> > > > Thanks for both, Robin.
> > > >
> > > > My wife is rapt; she has printed out the whole poem, and says it speaks
> > to
> > > > her
> > > > even more than her favourite Wordsworth passages.
> > > > She says she twisted her ankle part way through the Romantic poets
> > course
> > > > twenty
> > > > years ago, and missed Shelley altogether!
> > > > I recall Donald Davie long ago ('Purity of Diction...') made a case for
> > a
> > > > levelheaded rather than rhapsodic Shelley on the strength of 'Julian
> > and
> > > > Maddalo'. But I guess it remains on the unread or under-read side of
> > > > Shelley.
> > > >
> > > > Max
> > > >
> > > > Quoting Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>:
> > > >
> > > > > Specifically:
> > > > >
> > > > > Most wretched men
> > > > > Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
> > > > > They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
> > > > >
> > > > > Shelley, "Julian and Maddalo", Line 544.
> > > > >
> > > > > Robin
> > > > >
> > > > > > "... in the preface to the collection [Elizabeth Barrett
> > (Browning)]
> > > > > > insisted on the sorrow and suffering necessary to the poet, and she
> > > > quoted
> > > > > > from Shelley's 'Julian and Maddalo' to clinch her argument that 'we
> > > > learn
> > > > > > in suffering what we teach in song.' ... "
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > David Bircumshaw
> > > "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
> > > You say are poems" - DMeltzer
> > > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > > http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> > > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
> You say are poems" - DMeltzer
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
|