On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, John Kinsella wrote:
> landscape is history as far as I'm concerned.
Interesting that this discussion turns, perhaps temporarily, from
"pastoral" to "landscape" - there's a connection, obviously, but...
My original starting point w/ pastoral was, do you actually have to be
there? Or is it just a literary convention, getting remoter by the minute?
And my hope/contention was/is that I hope in pastoral there's at least the
possibility that it comes from a real need/involvement.
I find that "landscape" is one stage more remote, even etymologically -
you do no more than look at it. You read history from it (which is
important) but you don't have to actually be part of it (in the sense of
randolph/cris's important body dance thread which I hope to come back to
at some point). Click. the camera does it. (with big sloppy paintbrushes
you can participate more - but usually that's mostly with your medium, not
your actual landscape). Remember all those poems where the great - uh -
Phil Larkin gets no further to engagement w/ his (one assumes) fellow
humans than looking, through a window, or a frame.
It's that sense of "right down among 'em" that I get in Niedecker & Clare
that I'm interested in. That's the pastoral I want to move forward in.
___________________________________________________________
Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
___________________________________________________________
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
