----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism


> I've been thinking a lot lately about stories and narrative, without
> coming to any clear conclusions about any of it. Basically I agree
> with Dominic, that what is at stake is the protocols of narration, and
> that narrative itself is a far more complex beast than some of these
> arguments allow. The simplest kinds of story telling (oral tales, say)
> are often far too fragmentary to be "linear". And even an
> old-fashioned 19th century novel - a form of which I am very fond -
> moves forward and backward in space and time in ways that are not
> straightforward at all.
>
> One assumes an audience always, I think, even if it is only one's
> inner self. That audience is basically the same for me as a writer
> whether I am writing epic novels or lyric poetry, however different
> they might be in fact. (Or in number. I do appreciate the irony that
> my most widely read poetry - by hundreds of thousands of readers - is
> the poetry that I've written for the fantasy novels). Narrative as
> conventions of story, plot and character for me fits most comfortably
> with prose, which perhaps sits more humbly with grand objectives. I
> like making up stories, and they always end up in prose; I like
> stories because they are a way of making meaning, and also because of
> that idea of delight, which is much underestimated. If I'm writing for
> theatre or writing poetry I am much less interested in story, and much
> more interested in other things - a narrative of feeling and ideas,
> perhaps.
>
> I don't know about speaking for or to a tribe. One never knows, when
> one is actually writing, whether one is speaking to anybody. Unless
> you are directly writing for actors. And whether one can presume to
> speak for anyone is another kettle of fish altogether. That's
> something you find out afterwards, if people actually read what you
> write, and it's something other people have to decide. Because they
> decide if it belongs to them, and if they do, it doesn't belong to you
> any more.
>
> xA
>
> -- 


"simplest kinds of story telling (oral tales, say) are often far too 
fragmentary" - depends, I suppose, what you're thinking of.  Marko the 
Prince and other oral epics of Serbia - very straightforward and Homeric. 
Likewise Gilgamesh, probably based on oral tales.  And then the crucial term 
is "based on."  I was talking about literature, not oral traditions.

Vergil: Augustus and Rome.  Tasso: aristocratic Catholic Europe.  Camoes: 
imperial Portugal and expansionist Europe.  Milton: the radical Reformation. 
Nazim Hikmet: the international proletariat.  Tribes.

The inherent requirements of narrative poetry are very different from those 
of the novel.  "[Moving] forward and backward in space and time in ways that 
are not straightforward at all" gets in the way.  Linearity (I'll drop the 
quotes), coherence, relentless cumulative power, are needed.  Their 
absence - a refusal to differentiate between narrative and lyric - makes 
Walcott's Omeros unreadable.  Their presence makes Glyn Maxwell's Time's 
Fool lastingly enjoyable and useful, despite the relative triviality of its 
theme.