<<
Alison, this thread has gone on so long and become so convoluted it's easy
to forget who holds what position. I’m glad, though, we can agree on
something—it may be a first!
Like Barry, I can’t see how one would technically introduce a jump-cut into
poetry. I’m not saying it can’t be done, just wondering how.
>>
I was in the midst of working through a reply to one of Jeffrey's earlier
posts, but just a thought on this particular issue.
In the *narrowest sense of "jump cut", whereby the effect is produced by the
(physical or otherwise) excision of frames from an unedited continuous
transcript, or "shot", this was exactly what Ezra Pound did to Eliot's
manuscript of "The Waste Land".
So we're back to where this whole ball of wax started from.
What is pretty much obvious is that *one sense of "jump cut", the one which
would locate the Platonic Meaning of "jump cut" in the work of Godard, and
by backwards extension to Eisenstein, exists. Who's arguing this?
What irritates the hell out of me is the way in which Jeffrey seems to me to
be privileging this meaning over all others.
It's not even, as far as I can make out, and regardless of what Jeffrey was
taught, even the predominant meaning of the term in practical cinematography
("film studies" might be a separate issue).
Where the discussion began to go west was when Uche raised the question of
Shakespeare.
My initial response to this was the thought, "Oh jeezus!"
It's not that I actually disagree with Uche here, that a lot of what we're
talking about was already done in Shakespearean drama, but that it becomes a
bit messy once this comes up.
I began thinking about the way in which narrative discontinuity is used in
the Sonnets, and isn't actually picked up as a mainstream literary technique
till the work of Berryman in the Dream Songs and Lowell in _Life Studies_,
but I also did the obvious (for a lexicographer) which was look up to see
what the OED says.
At that point, I admittedly began to drift off topic -- it's not that it's a
hell of a difficult to find pre-OED cites if you put your mind to it (both
Victor Steinbok and I came up with virtually the same material) but that the
entire OED entry on "jump-" is shot to buggery.
<sigh>
So what else is new?
So just a Last Thought ...
If (Jeffrey) you want a narrow instance of what might be considered an
example of transgressive narrative presentation which can be usefully
illuminated by the retrospective application of the term "jump cut"
(sometimes, but not always, a cigar is only a cigar, Doctor Freud), consider
_The Winter's Tale_, Act III, scene iii, the death of Antigonous as narrated
by the Clown.
I'm pretty sure this is what Uche had in mind when he raised the spectre of
Bill the Bard.
At least, this gives me a story to dine out on in at ICHLL5 -- "You think
you have the ultimate 'Outraged from Tunbridge Wells' Green Ink Luncacy?
How about this ..."
Thanks, Jeffrey.
Robin
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