Separating philosophy from poetry is absurd. So is Eliot's description of philosophy, which reduces it to exercises in logic on abstract subjects. Authentic philosophy brings to light fundamental facts that are evident to few, and characterizes and judges them. I'm glad Lucretius ignored Eliot's advice.
I confess I prefer my philosophy in prose, it's a more powerful conduit for it, but it can also be delivered powerfully in more poetic format, though the substance will always take precedence over the form. Al Ma'arri the greatest Arabic poet did nothing else in his poetry but speak the facts as he knew them to be, though he transmitted them in the most polished verse--verse better than any of Eliot's. Appended to his Luzumiyat is an apology for its alleged content, i.e. "poetry," which of course, he explains, must always ignore honest truth in favor of strange and fabulous tales. His justifiable contempt for that notion comes through loud and clear. Honest talk is everything.
Truth is beautiful but the beautiful is seldom true. Montaigne correctly observed that he who seeks the truth does not seek the desirable. Truth is ugly, which is why Terence rightly says veritas odium parit. Eliot says to paint something intrguing to eye and ear and that can't offend, however beyond penetration. This is art for art's sake. Stevens thankfully often conveys his actual appraisal of life, if in the most exalted language. Eliot would've done better to apprentice to him than to Pound.
I always found it baffling how Eliot could be so wrong on so many fundamental points of literary criticism and yet be so celebrated as a critic.
He also thought Virgil's Aeneid was the the quintessential example of a classic. The Aeneid, while artfully done, was essentially an imitation of Homer, a genuine imitation, and was ultimately written for the purposes of giving the Romans a sacred myth. But it was an imitation. Homer sought to poetically capture the essence of the historical quagmire that was the Trojan war and what lessons could be drawn from that disaster. The Aeneid was essentially just an artistic re-imagining for the purposes of appropriating the Greek legacy for Roman purposes. How could it be the quintessential classic???
Eliot makes point after point that leaves one wondering if he believed any of these things he said, or if he was just writing for the sake opining on various topics and offering interesting takes
He did write many fine lines, but alas, I guess it takes more than fine lines to breach the temple of Truth.
Was Virgil a copycat? It is possible to tell the same stories others tell yet to do so wholly independently. After reaching my own conclusions, only subsequently did I run across historic echoes of them. Any good thinker must be a total original in my opinion. I'll take the yodeler over the echo any day.
No, I think it's one thing to revisit an existing story, it's another to create a very elaborate imitation. Where's the line? It's an interesting discussion, but I think such lines exist and can be drawn. Homer's epics were based on conveying a historical truth and timeless wisdom. Virgil's was more of a very artful and sophisticated propaganda piece by a first-rate imitator, I reckon.
But Virgil was important because his poem served as the bridge to the ancient world for the non Greek-speakers like Dante et al. Without him, they would have been at a major loss. History would have turned out fairly different, arguably.
That being said, I think Virgil himself knew what he created was an imitation. I believe on his death bed he asked that the Aeneid be burned. Naturally, I wouldn't go that far. It has a lot of brilliant lines and turned out to be way more important than he anticipated.
But more to the point: for Elliot to say the Aeneid was the quintessential model for a classic seems silly, in my opinion. I can't wrap my head around why someone would think that. But he made a lot of similarly silly, tenuous points.
I find his critique of the concluding lines of Keats' Ode also silly. As well as his analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet i.e. that it lacked an "objective correlative." Common man!
I like Eliot's description, steeped in sardonic humor, of eld, toward the end of Prufock. I think he knew life was a losing cause--and like runnng the gauntlet taboot. My favorite line of his is "There will be time to murder and create...." from the same poem.
I'm not in a position to say if Virgil was more a borrower than an original. Some worthy thinkers believed he had a great mind, a highly endowed intellect. Must doublechck to see if Montaigne was among them. I would guess a good thinker would recognize his own kind. Are people these days saying he lacked the spark of originality? I confess I don't follow current academic conversations. They don't attract me. For my reading I go to the dead, some of them very long dead. Currently am rereading Plutarch.
Truth is beauty beauty is truth is hard to regard as true unless you assign personal meaning to the words. I could call truth beautiful for ex., by which I would mean that it was enormously rare and hugely refreshing. I could also call beauty truth, but again only by assigning my own meaning to the words, such as "something much to be desired," by "something"meaning truth, which unfortunately is never pretty.
By objective correlative I assume he meant something like a visible landscape such as realist painters paint. Words reproducing visible things and transferring them recognizably to an auditor's inner eye. He was capable of evoking scenes effectively, but wasn't as obssessed with doing that as Updike for example. Nonetheless, he had a pretty good camera in his head, could bring scenes to life.
Separating philosophy from poetry is absurd. So is Eliot's description of philosophy, which reduces it to exercises in logic on abstract subjects. Authentic philosophy brings to light fundamental facts that are evident to few, and characterizes and judges them. I'm glad Lucretius ignored Eliot's advice.
I confess I prefer my philosophy in prose, it's a more powerful conduit for it, but it can also be delivered powerfully in more poetic format, though the substance will always take precedence over the form. Al Ma'arri the greatest Arabic poet did nothing else in his poetry but speak the facts as he knew them to be, though he transmitted them in the most polished verse--verse better than any of Eliot's. Appended to his Luzumiyat is an apology for its alleged content, i.e. "poetry," which of course, he explains, must always ignore honest truth in favor of strange and fabulous tales. His justifiable contempt for that notion comes through loud and clear. Honest talk is everything.
Truth is beautiful but the beautiful is seldom true. Montaigne correctly observed that he who seeks the truth does not seek the desirable. Truth is ugly, which is why Terence rightly says veritas odium parit. Eliot says to paint something intrguing to eye and ear and that can't offend, however beyond penetration. This is art for art's sake. Stevens thankfully often conveys his actual appraisal of life, if in the most exalted language. Eliot would've done better to apprentice to him than to Pound.
I always found it baffling how Eliot could be so wrong on so many fundamental points of literary criticism and yet be so celebrated as a critic.
He also thought Virgil's Aeneid was the the quintessential example of a classic. The Aeneid, while artfully done, was essentially an imitation of Homer, a genuine imitation, and was ultimately written for the purposes of giving the Romans a sacred myth. But it was an imitation. Homer sought to poetically capture the essence of the historical quagmire that was the Trojan war and what lessons could be drawn from that disaster. The Aeneid was essentially just an artistic re-imagining for the purposes of appropriating the Greek legacy for Roman purposes. How could it be the quintessential classic???
Eliot makes point after point that leaves one wondering if he believed any of these things he said, or if he was just writing for the sake opining on various topics and offering interesting takes
He did write many fine lines, but alas, I guess it takes more than fine lines to breach the temple of Truth.
Was Virgil a copycat? It is possible to tell the same stories others tell yet to do so wholly independently. After reaching my own conclusions, only subsequently did I run across historic echoes of them. Any good thinker must be a total original in my opinion. I'll take the yodeler over the echo any day.
No, I think it's one thing to revisit an existing story, it's another to create a very elaborate imitation. Where's the line? It's an interesting discussion, but I think such lines exist and can be drawn. Homer's epics were based on conveying a historical truth and timeless wisdom. Virgil's was more of a very artful and sophisticated propaganda piece by a first-rate imitator, I reckon.
But Virgil was important because his poem served as the bridge to the ancient world for the non Greek-speakers like Dante et al. Without him, they would have been at a major loss. History would have turned out fairly different, arguably.
That being said, I think Virgil himself knew what he created was an imitation. I believe on his death bed he asked that the Aeneid be burned. Naturally, I wouldn't go that far. It has a lot of brilliant lines and turned out to be way more important than he anticipated.
But more to the point: for Elliot to say the Aeneid was the quintessential model for a classic seems silly, in my opinion. I can't wrap my head around why someone would think that. But he made a lot of similarly silly, tenuous points.
I find his critique of the concluding lines of Keats' Ode also silly. As well as his analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet i.e. that it lacked an "objective correlative." Common man!
The list goes on.
I like Eliot's description, steeped in sardonic humor, of eld, toward the end of Prufock. I think he knew life was a losing cause--and like runnng the gauntlet taboot. My favorite line of his is "There will be time to murder and create...." from the same poem.
I'm not in a position to say if Virgil was more a borrower than an original. Some worthy thinkers believed he had a great mind, a highly endowed intellect. Must doublechck to see if Montaigne was among them. I would guess a good thinker would recognize his own kind. Are people these days saying he lacked the spark of originality? I confess I don't follow current academic conversations. They don't attract me. For my reading I go to the dead, some of them very long dead. Currently am rereading Plutarch.
Truth is beauty beauty is truth is hard to regard as true unless you assign personal meaning to the words. I could call truth beautiful for ex., by which I would mean that it was enormously rare and hugely refreshing. I could also call beauty truth, but again only by assigning my own meaning to the words, such as "something much to be desired," by "something"meaning truth, which unfortunately is never pretty.
By objective correlative I assume he meant something like a visible landscape such as realist painters paint. Words reproducing visible things and transferring them recognizably to an auditor's inner eye. He was capable of evoking scenes effectively, but wasn't as obssessed with doing that as Updike for example. Nonetheless, he had a pretty good camera in his head, could bring scenes to life.