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Hi Jamie, Robin, Jeff Sideways from VFT, but here we go. This is more an explanation than anything, fwiw. I often feel when I speak about theatre, people assume I'm talking about something entirely different from the range of I work I mean. In a lot of postwar theatre, and up to now, that "decision" of interpretation can be suspended or made ambiguous or alienated from itself, and thus thrown open past any possibility of literalism. (The button might equally be Lear's or Cordelia's or maybe the Fool's: perhaps it is my button). Which is why I mentioned writers like Heiner Mueller or Sarah Kane, who use the form of theatre to create all sorts of complex events of language which behave in ways that I can't see as being essentially any different from poetry. (Of course there are differences, in writing work explicitly for performance, which is a different form, but even then the closer you look, the more any certain boundaries dissolve). And then there's the poetic of theatre artists like Romeo Castellucci or of contemporary dance, especially post Pina Bausch, which has a big influence on contemporary theatre makers here. That goes beyond or underneath language, often exploiting it in performance but opening it up in ways which are often analogous to poetry, and with some artists, in their use of language, directly poetic, especially in "subverting its relationship to speech". The choreographer Lucy Guerin makes works with language that are precisely poetic investigations, for instance. For such semiotically allusive theatre (in fact, I believe for all art) the response of any audience member is contingent and inevitably (crucially) subjective, but "validity" doesn't come into it: the audience has the responses it has, in a dynamic process of exchange - intellectual, emotional, sensual - with the work and then with each other. But the more rewarding responses to any particular encounter are always those which are most attentive. I've just been writing a short essay on Einstein on the Beach, and read an account of the collaboration that created it in which Philip Glass says he's not concerned with the meaning, but it's very important that the work is _meaningful_. Which I take to mean that he and Wilson wanted to create an experience that was precisely not about conclusive interpetation, but which rather indicated a series of possibilities, suspending any conclusiveness as far as they possibly can. So they made a dramatic and musical structure which was basically crystalline in its formality, rifted it with all sorts of connections through their collaboration/s, and then the rest is up to the audience, another kind of collaboration. It's not like this idea of theatre is especially new. Anyway. I guess this is why I don't really care for the notion that poetry qua poetry is exceptional, aside from the particularities of being a poem (and even then... a poem written or spoken or collaged or sculpted or what?); poetry seems a certain condition of language to me, that invites all the various levels of responsiveness, and which occurs in many ways. And I don't mean that in any reductive sense. xx On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:01 PM, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > I'd like to apologize to the list for the tedium, and increasing > exasperation, of my last few posts. It would be convenient to blame Jeff > for his frustrating manner of stalling the discussion in what I see as > peripheral or irrelevant argument, but obviously I share some > responsibility for allowing myself to be de-railed. I would suggest that if > the topic is to continue in any useful way we dispense with further > point-scoring. I would make a plea to Jeff at least to trust my sincerity > with regard to the various statements I've made so I don't have to keep > needlessly repeating the same things: our approaches are in many respects > deeply opposed (though not in every respect as I've tried to show), but I > think it would help clarify that opposition if I wasn't having continually > to manoeuvre myself out of positions with which I have no particular > sympathy, and which Jeff, with his extensive reading in literary theory, is > keen to have me occupy. So my counsel is simply a bit more care and caution > in reading each other's posts. > > Robin, and Alison, > Both your posts that make a connection with theatre, and both of you made > me feel that I had too quickly conceded the singularity, or the exception, > of poetry. Not for the same reasons, and not nearly as absolutely as Jeff, > I do think of poetry as often making different demands on language. I see > it as having both an intimate and an oblique or even a subverting relation > to speech, but there are risks in divorcing the art from speech as well as > from the novel, or the short story, or theatre; in making it a sealed-off > entity with very special privileges, and those are ones that Alison's post > dwells on. > In the case of King Lear it would obviously be idiotic to sever the play > from the poetry in which it's composed, and the interpretative decisions > made in staging the play cannot be so easily dismissed as Jeff's response > suggests. The director must choose in this case between two understandings > of a line, and now a third, absurd one. I'd always assumed it was Lear's > button, and that interpretation makes far more sense to me. But still a > decision has to be made by the director, and this is an analogous one to > the decisions a critic makes in reading a poem. Jeff's position that all > interpretations are equally valid is quite possibly a watertight one, but > comes, it seems to me, at an annihilating cost to the art. I still feel > that it isn't at all a defence against elitism, that the elitism it defends > against is merely a phantom dreamt up within the hygienic precincts of > literary theory. > > As regards translation, a topic that Robin has raised, and which has > particular relevance to Forrest-Thompson whose work is scattered with > translated fragments from Sappho (Robin) to Mallarme' (Sutherland). In the > last weeks I've been working on two translations, one of short stories, the > other of poetry and (in the light of this discussion) was wondering what > difference was involved in the work. For the moment I've nothing very > conclusive to offer - except a banal distinction that the first draft for > prose is a laborious activity which involves, at least for me, the attempt > to make sure an accurate draft is established. What fun there is comes in > the later stages of moving it away from a wooden literalism. With the poems > that process seem to occur almost at the outset, and immediately or pretty > quickly vaults over the anhedonic graft. I don't think this is due merely > to word length, but at the same time I don't wish to over-stress the > "exceptionalism" of poetry even in translation. > Still considering this... > Jamie > > > > -----Original Message----- From: Robin Hamilton > Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 7:32 PM > > To: [log in to unmask]**AC.UK<[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Re: "Multiple Registers, Intertextuality and Boundaries of > Interpretation in Veronica Forrest-Thompson" > > Jamie:, > > When you say: > > << > If I claim that in > Frost's 'Mending Wall' the opening line "Something there is that doesn't > love a wall" refers to tortoises, and explain that I happen to know that > tortoises are particularly averse to walls, then, in the absence of any > evidence I can adduce from the poem, any reader will have a right to say > I'm > completely off my trolley. You may well support me by saying that it is my > right to take anything I want from a poem, and I'm grateful for your > support, but I don't think you should be encouraging me. > >> >>> > ... I think you finger the core of the problem. > > If we agree (as I assume most of us do) that poems are open to multiple > readings (and are read by multiple readers), then an argument is possible. > Once we deny that there is any possibility of misreading - that, at an > extreme, "All readings of a text are of equal value" - then the possibility > of dialogue leaves by the window. (Which particular window of the room it > leaves by is open to discussion, but it certainly doesn't leave by the > door). > > I was about to say that this issue cannot be avoided by editors, or > directors of plays, but I realise that I should also add, appositely in > this > context, translators. At the end of the day, one (for the moment) line of > a > text rather than another must be printed, one set of stage actions > performed, or one set English words chosen to represent an Italian > original. > When I was, in an earlier incarnation and for my sins, lecturing on > literary > theory, I'd pick a crux from the end of _King Lear_ to illustrate this. > "Prithee undo this button" -- which button, Cordelia's or Lear's? A > plausible case can be made for either, but on stage one must be chosen -- > either the actor playing Lear gestures towards the dead Cordelia, imagining > she is alive (the Lear Still Deluded reading), or he gestures towards his > own throat (the Lear Asking For Help reading). The act of interpretive > choice has consequences. It is, of course, possible to blur the stage > business, by leaving the line ambiguous (which seems to me, in editorial > terms, comparable to failing to footnote a problematic line of a text > rather > than, at the least, indicating there is a problem there). > > It would be possible, I imagine, to envisage a scenario, in which the line > occurs just after Lear has scrabbled across the stage and is fiddling > wildly > with the codpiece of the Third Spearcarrier. I shall now think of this > reading, in deference to your Frost example, as the Tortoise Reading of the > Lear Crux. > > Editors, directors, and translators are forced to confront situations which > are elsewhere blithely discussed in abstract terms. This, among other > reasons, is why I prefer Foucault's retort, in "What Is An Author?" to the > text by Barthes which provoked Foucault's response. I hadn't realised, > which seems possible from the tone of part of this discussion, that > Barthes' > "Death of the Author" could still be considered holy writ -- it's not as if > Foucault's challenge is particularly new. It was, after all, first > delivered as a lecture in 1969, two years after Barthes' piece appeared. > > Best, > > Robin > -- Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com