Not being "any more remarkable" is quite different from "nothing else
happened" after the 1920s (Mayakovsky? Blaise Cendrars? Olson? JH
Prynne? No one has mentioned Beckett - who I think has been the most
influential of all, and is certainly the most written about...) And
it's not particularly radical to point out that the "great man" view
of history elides an awful lot.
I adore High Modernism. But you might as well argue that from this end
of the century, it looks like a continuation of Romanticism, rather
than a break with it, and that Romanticism was the real revolution,
and that we're still dealing with the affetrshocks of that.
xA
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 1:09 AM, Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alison, you seem to have caricatured my main points. I agreed with Tim on the importance of non-Anglo-American influences, extending my argument only to allow for the dissemination of these influences afforded by Eliot’s (and others’) prominence in the US and in Europe. If you wish to re-write history then be my guest, but please don’t just say it’s “deliberately old fashioned” to point these things out.
>
> I also agreed with Tim regarding what you call the “amazing stuff that happened post WW2”; though, I have to admit, I can’t see it as any more remarkable than the shock wave produced by High Modernism. I think in a more reflective moment you would agree with me.
>
>
>
> Original Message:
>
>
> I'm with Tim here. "Jump cuts"? What about what Swift was doing in The
> Tale of A Tub in the early 1700s? What about all the amazing stuff
> that happened post WW2?
>
> It's nonsense - and desperately old-fashioned - to reduce vital and
> fascinating and continuing influences and eruptions to two easily
> remembered names. What about South American post colonial poetry, or
> Arabic poetry, or, as Tim points out, European poetry, which is rather
> more than a prelude to the spotlight falling on Mr Eliot and Mr Joyce
> doing the storm scene in Act III, with everyone else just being the
> denouement before civilisation fades away into the footlights and the
> maids come on to clean up the stage. Or, perhaps, Mr Side comes in to
> show everyone where they've gone wrong.
>
> Anyway, as Tim also said, hardly worth arguing. Just got mildly
> irritated there. As you were.
>
> xA
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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