I think what Graves' was (unconsciously or not) restating is the old
distinction between country understanding and town intelligence. It's not
heard of so much in Britain these days as the cultural relationship between
urbs and its farmlands has altered so much: in Hardy's youth there still was
a distinctive rural peasantry and an oral tradition of ballad singing, not
something you're likely to find in the dormitory villages of today.
You will still see something of a distinctive rural ( and troubled by city
slickers) in poets from some countries - Les Murray springs to mind, I don't
mean to say Murray is a Bumpkin, he's a very sophisticated man, but there's
a real distinction between him and, say, a Charles Bernstein.
2009/6/23 Angel <[log in to unmask]>
> I wish my last name was swords...
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On Jun 22, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Desmond Swords <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> WARNING: HIGHLY SPECIOUS NON SCHOLARLY GUFF. DO NOT READ EFF OFF.
>>
>> "Craft is natural capcity, ability and the attention one spends
>> Technique is the way of accomplishing."
>>
>> Plato - Cratylus: 389 - 390.
>>
>> Plato i think nails it, and it is interesting that Graves, for all his
>> resistance to Socrate's pupil, essentially concurs with the above
>> definition.
>>
>> Not on the surface of course - oh no: because his natural propensity for
>> sublimating the obvious into a poetic algebra along the lines of level six
>> anruth dark-speech bearla na filidh whose hidden meanings yield themselves
>> only to the initiate and adept trained in the autochthonous Pelasgian
>> order
>> of secret mystical knowledge he devoted his entire life enquiring into for
>> the purpose of becoming fluent in Hypo-Borean law -- meant Bob's personal
>> (and public) project as a bore who could perfrom in that role perhaps at a
>> greater rate of torque than any of his competitors and rivals, mirrored
>> that
>> of the ancient ollamhs whose chief interest, as Boberto states:
>>
>> "..was the refinement of complex poetic truth to exact statement. S/He
>> knew
>> the history and mythic value of every word s/he used and can have cared
>> little for the ordinary person's appreciation of their work; s/he valued
>> only the judgement of her (or his) colleagues, whom he seldom met without
>> a
>> lively exchange of poetic wit in extempre verse."
>>
>> So we can see here that though the link between Plato and Bob's statements
>> on Craft and Technique may not be immediately grasped by a lay reader -
>> the
>> undertow reveals itself to the higher thinking and intellectually skilled
>> whose a priori rationale and inborn Poetic - is really wanting only to
>> know
>> the bottom-line (poetic) meaning and magical property of every word he
>> deployed in the millions he wrote during a very long life of being hated
>> by
>> those who did not have a continual stream of attractive young people
>> flocking to sit at his feet and imbibe from the living source, such arcana
>> as to be getting on and dropping out with, back in the sixties and
>> seventies
>> when he was at the peak of his power as a mystic nifty dresser looking the
>> part in top hat and cane, locuting in a flawless pukka upper crust brogue,
>> what was what vis a vis craft and technique.
>>
>> Perhaps if he were around today, the first thing Bob would do if he were
>> to
>> come here and show off - would be to give the etymologies of the two
>> words:
>>
>> Craft - from Old English cræft, which means natural ability, skill etc
>>
>> Technique - from teche - art, craft, in the sense of physical technical
>> knowledge and know-how of making stuff.
>>
>> The less gullible amongst you will of course know the quote heading this
>> speculative discourse is ficticious, something the craftsperson in me, the
>> natural wit side, made up as a creative launch pad into discussing the
>> topic
>> in hand.
>>
>> I admit to not possesing any knowledge which seperates the above two
>> words,
>> but after finding a way in, it seems some line of logic from the
>> etymologies
>> suggests Craft is the natural talent we possess, and Technique, something
>> which can be learned by anyone, and a combination of the two is needed to
>> shape something of interest and value to Scholarship generally.
>>
>> Perhaps if Bob were here now he would recount how Plato speaks of τέχνη
>> (techne) in the Republic with two distinct interpretations, when engaging
>> with (fierce-fighter) Thrasymachus, who violently disagrees with the
>> Socratic conclusion of his discussion with Polemarchus about justice and
>> argues that techne existing in a wholly theoretical sense, represented a
>> threat to peace, order and good government - but when deploying the word
>> technê in relation to practical use, in the sense of crafting objects, it
>> was a benefit.
>>
>> So what Bob's saying here mirrors Plato's distinction that theoretical
>> Technique, the waffle at the fruiter end of the po-mo spectrum in which
>> all
>> kinds of crazee specs are conjured into being by eromenos-like groovers
>> the
>> grove being supervised and strategically steered by senior erastae into
>> writing 50,000 word theses on how the theories of the profs three doors up
>> have made amazing epistemological advances in the name of Scholarship --
>> can
>> all be a bit on the airy fairy side. Whilst the Craft, the presupposition
>> of
>> some otherworldly magical doctrine inherent in the unknowable order of
>> unconscious tune watermarking the blueprint of the cosmos - is the gear in
>> the psychological DNA, or not - i think.
>>
>> Craft = innate ability
>>
>> Technique = taught competence
>>
>> Technique is theoretical know-how and the technician assumes that
>> L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems can be constructed by formulae all have access to
>> regardless of natural ability, written like instructions on soup packets,
>> by
>> a variety of methods which (often mistakenly) think they are radical and
>> new, but are really, the staid and boring missiles aimed at rival
>> competing
>> pedagog-targets who are all on three squares, sinecure and pension plan
>> who
>> (often) despise mere the craftspeople for their intellectual fizz and
>> ability to fix text in ways which gets read by a wider non-collegiate
>> audeince of real people who the faux radz then claim are all dumbos for
>> spending on the garret based attic-dwellers havin a larf at Eliot, Pound
>> and
>> whose only God and unrealisable bar and aim to reach, is the later Yeats,
>> ignoring what in a 7C Old Irish text detailing poetic first principles,
>> terms:
>>
>> "The abundence of goading one receives when taking up the bardic craft."
>>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"Nothing can be done in the face
of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
|