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I think you make some good points, Jon. Yet, I think it is safe to say that there have been times when certain kinds of formalism have been both politically conservative and dead set against violations of metric systems - as if those violations would 'bring down the house' (i.e,, those in power in either Church or Government). There were those French who were adamant about the solidity, harmony, beauty etc. of Alexandrine (sp?) metric forms. That were associated with the Romance languages, Mediterranean culture and history (as well as anti-Modernist). These folks thought that Rimbaud was a savage spun out of gothic northern climes (Germany, Belgium, et.) Did Pound or Eliot ever cotton to Rimbaud?? Or the surrealists? Or the Futurists. Was it merely an aesthetic choice or political, as well. But all these folks and movements are full of twists and turns - for good and for ill. I think Furturism was very vital until it thought it could quicken its means thru Fascism. (the fate of many impatient, frustrated young revolutionaries). Stephen V --- On Mon, 8/3/09, Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: "incapacity" To: [log in to unmask] Date: Monday, August 3, 2009, 4:17 PM > if a form, however charming > and creative, is somewhat reactionary, the meaning it brings is, at least > in a great measure, also reactionary. I don't understand this. How can a literary form be reactionary? Is blank verse reactionary? Is a sonnet? Does that mean that it's impossible to write in those forms without validating aristocratic, conservative, or obsolete values? To turn it around, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound may fairly be said to be politically reactionary, yet though they wrote in traditional forms, they also were two of the major creators of modern free verse. So it seems that radical formal innovation is no guarantee of political progressiveness. In Italy, at least, leading-edge formal innovations such as Futurism were connected with fascism (Marinetti), and one of the major and most radically innovative of twentieth century French prose fiction was Celine. We could also on the other hand point to a strong strain in leftism against "decadent bourgeois" avant-gardism, as in Stalinist "social realism," which produced works the ethos of which seems to the unenlightened strangely similar to Nazi propaganda. In short, I don't see the historical justification for the equation "formally reactionary = politically reactionary/formally innovative = politically progressive." -- =============================================== Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis ===============================================