More emoting about poetry
My friend James has a theory that it is better not to do academic research into the writers whom one really loves. Similarly, my grandfather once said that at eighteen he fell in love with Yeats, but would no more discuss him with another man than he would his wife. I took issue with my beloved bro when he first reported, and supported, this latter dictum, but I think I was wrong.
It is true that I have had worlds upon worlds of beauty and truth and pathos, not to mention artistry and skill and brilliance, uncovered for me by being "taught" the works of certain authors; layers of meaning upon which, I am confident, I would not have happened unaided. For these I am more than grateful. However, there exists (for me, at least) a class of writing which speaks to one too intimately to wish to have it mishapen by the push and pull of academic rigour. Of course, one gains a great deal by the application of intellectual scrutiny. But a very different kind of satisfaction is also to be derived from certain works of literature, something akin to - or rather, something that is - emotion. And this you wish to dissect no more than you would wish to dissect the wordless joy of an embrace.
I do not allege that poetic effects add nothing to my apprecation of the sentiment (that would be positively nonsensical). I merely mean that mounting a laborious and closely-argued case about the historical importance or counter-cultural atrificiality of, say, Catullus XI does not cause me to find it more or less affecting. Of course, I can say many interesting things about the poem and why I think it fine, and that is one real and meaningful level of response, and worthwhile. But my deepest reponse to it is not rational and therefore is not open to rational analysis: I cannot *defend* my love of Catullus XI, or Catullus VIII, or Catullus LXVIII, any more logically than I can defend my love of my mother. I can point to admirable things about both, but as anyone knows who has ever loved anyone or anything, admirable qualities are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the kindling of that emotion.
So I could write criticism of these poems, but it woudl never say the things I would really want to say: that the fourth line of Catullus CI makes hot tears start to my eyes; that Catullus VIII evokes in me a longing to be loved with terrible passion. This all says a very great deal more about me than about Catullus. Which is why it may conceivably interest readers of my blog, but not, I think, readers of the Journal of Roman Studies.
(Catullus, btw, is the reason I am a classicist. Poems VII, XIII and LXXVI, specifically. Ah, to be 15 again.)
It is true that I have had worlds upon worlds of beauty and truth and pathos, not to mention artistry and skill and brilliance, uncovered for me by being "taught" the works of certain authors; layers of meaning upon which, I am confident, I would not have happened unaided. For these I am more than grateful. However, there exists (for me, at least) a class of writing which speaks to one too intimately to wish to have it mishapen by the push and pull of academic rigour. Of course, one gains a great deal by the application of intellectual scrutiny. But a very different kind of satisfaction is also to be derived from certain works of literature, something akin to - or rather, something that is - emotion. And this you wish to dissect no more than you would wish to dissect the wordless joy of an embrace.
I do not allege that poetic effects add nothing to my apprecation of the sentiment (that would be positively nonsensical). I merely mean that mounting a laborious and closely-argued case about the historical importance or counter-cultural atrificiality of, say, Catullus XI does not cause me to find it more or less affecting. Of course, I can say many interesting things about the poem and why I think it fine, and that is one real and meaningful level of response, and worthwhile. But my deepest reponse to it is not rational and therefore is not open to rational analysis: I cannot *defend* my love of Catullus XI, or Catullus VIII, or Catullus LXVIII, any more logically than I can defend my love of my mother. I can point to admirable things about both, but as anyone knows who has ever loved anyone or anything, admirable qualities are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the kindling of that emotion.
So I could write criticism of these poems, but it woudl never say the things I would really want to say: that the fourth line of Catullus CI makes hot tears start to my eyes; that Catullus VIII evokes in me a longing to be loved with terrible passion. This all says a very great deal more about me than about Catullus. Which is why it may conceivably interest readers of my blog, but not, I think, readers of the Journal of Roman Studies.
(Catullus, btw, is the reason I am a classicist. Poems VII, XIII and LXXVI, specifically. Ah, to be 15 again.)
posted by Scarlet at 3:37 am
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