Can anyone understand Harold Bloom?
Smunkey5
good NIGHT his critical writing is THICK! I pored over his book on Wallace
Stevens for 10 or so minutes and couldn't make heads or tails of the
introduction, even!
Getting through books by Derrida and Pynchon wasn't THAT hard!
Paul Ilechko
Richard Harter
<pile...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Did you read Derrida of your own free will ?
I certainly hope so. It would be horrid to read him as assigned
reading.
>Smunkey5 wrote:
>
>> I mean, I agree with his wise pronouncements on who's who in literature. But
>> good NIGHT his critical writing is THICK! I pored over his book on Wallace
>> Stevens for 10 or so minutes and couldn't make heads or tails of the
>> introduction, even!
>>
>> Getting through books by Derrida and Pynchon wasn't THAT hard!
>
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net,
http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, http://www.varinoma.com
It is unfortunate that the dishonest politicians give
the remaining one percent of their profession a bad name.
doug bassett
English Major. Wanted to sample some of that newfangled post-modern stuff,
so I took Modern Critical Theory. And yes, we were assigned various
unreadable essays of Derrida's.
doug
"Richard Harter" <c...@tiac.net> wrote in message
news:3b58e135...@news.SullyButtes.net...
Richard Harter
<dougb...@conectiv.net> wrote:
>Williams College -- late Eighties. Had to take a "criticism" class for the
>English Major. Wanted to sample some of that newfangled post-modern stuff,
>so I took Modern Critical Theory. And yes, we were assigned various
>unreadable essays of Derrida's.
You see, there you are. If you had read them on your volition they
would have been quite readable. The things that is hard to read are
they people trying to explain Derrida.
Smunkey5
>
Actually, yes. It was in a Literary Criticism class...I chose to write a paper
on Derrida's "Spurs." Because I had read a lot of Nietzsche, I was able to
understand it OK...everything he said was in reference to Nietzsche, so I had a
basis of knowledge to draw from. His other stuff, though, I admit, was a lot
harder to read than Bloom. I was just exaggerating for effect when I said
Derrida was easier to read.
I wouldn't choose to read Derrida (or Nietzsche) now, though. I merely want
someone to help me understand the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Lit crit doesn't
hold much interest for me anymore, but LITERATURE certainly does, as much as
ever. I never got a chance to take any classes on Stevens in undergrad, so I
am at a loss to understand much of what his theories/ideas are. I found that,
as to the difficult poets that I did study in undergrad, my understanding is
greatly enhanced...e.g. Auden, Eliot, Yeats. I'd merely like to find similar
tutelage to the works of Stevens.
Any suggestions?
OFurorHortensis
> I merely want someone to help me understand the poetry of Wallace Stevens>
I suggest that you read "The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the
Imagination" by Wallace Stevens.
" ...I am the necessary angel of earth, Since, in my sight, you see the earth
again.'
FurorHortensis
Michael Zeleny
Things that have their origin in the imagination or in the
emotions (poems) very often have meanings that differ in nature
from the meanings of things that have their origin in reason.
They have imaginative or emotional meanings, not rational
meanings, and they communicate these meanings to people who are
susceptible to imaginative or emotional meanings. They may
communicate nothing at all to people who are open only to
rational meanings. In short, things that have their origin in
the imagination or in the emotions very often take on a form
that is ambiguous or uncertain. It is not possible to attach a
single, rational meaning to such things without destroying the
imaginative or emotional ambiguity or uncertainty that is
inherent in them and that is why poets do not like to explain.
That the meanings given by others are sometimes meanings not
intended by the poet or that were never present in his mind
does not impair them as meanings. On the inside cover of
Mahler's Fifth Symphony recently issued by Columbia there is a
note on the meanings of that work. Bruno Walter, however, says
that he never heard Mahler intimate that the symphony had any
meanings except the meanings of the music. Does this impair
the meanings of the commentators as meanings? Certainly this
music had no single meaning which alone was the meaning
intended and to which one is bound to penetrate. If it had,
what justification could the composer have had for concealing
it? The score with its markings contains any meaning that
imaginative and sensitive listeners find in it. It takes very
little to experience the variety in everything. The poet, the
musician, both have explicit meanings but they express them in
the forms these take and not in explanation.
-- A comment on Meaning in Poetry, The Explicator, November 1948
Unlike Auden, Eliot, and Yeats, Wallace Stevens comes out of the
hermetic tradition in poetry. Because of that, the understanding of
his poems is unlikely to proceed from the original text to its ideal
synoptic explication. Nor is Stevens' own testimony in his essays
likely to get you any closer to your goal. Recall that Poe, Stevens'
precursor by way of Baudelaire and Mallarmé, delighted in mystifying
his credulous public with spurious accounts of the genesis of a poem.
However, if you read French, you could glean an indispensable genetic
insight into his literary process by approaching Stevens through these
poets and their common tropes of Platonic post-religiosity. Likewise,
an appreciation of contemporaneous painting, from Cézanne to Picasso,
would be of great help. Most of the critical commentary owes more to
the pedantic idea of the thing sustained by its author's hobby-horse,
than it does to the poetic thing itself. That said, the web teems
with analytical and historical resources. Try Google.
cordially
Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
"In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well,
for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.
Vlorbik
take your pick.
>I merely want
someone to help me understand the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Lit crit doesn't
hold much interest for me anymore. . .
http:/members.aol.com/vlorbik
Frank Lekens
smun...@aol.com says...
As far as I'm concerned, Stevens is incomprehensible. I've tried reading
some of his poems a couple of times, and I just give up.
But if you're looking for a commentator to his works, maybe you should
try Kermode. I generally find his criticism much more accessible than
Bloom's. I haven't tried it myself, but on the strength of Kermode's
work on other authors, which I have always found both useful and lucid,
I suspect that his criticism of Stevens might be enlightening too. He's
written a monograph on Stevens, an introduction to his poetry in the
Everyman Edition, and probably a number of assorted essays as well.
--
Frank Lekens
operamail.com is where it's really @
Bruce McGuffin
I dunno. I went to a lecture on Wallace Stevens a few months back,
and according to the lecturer, Wallace Stevens poetry is mostly
about word games (my synopses, not his words). Figuring out word
games isn't lit. crit. (or is it?).
The speaker was Samuel J. Keyser, who used to be on the faculty at
MIT, I think in the linguistics department (not sure). Keyser thinks
Stevens is the greatest poet in the english language, but was unable
to convince me of that in one hour.
Bruce McGuffin
j del col
Stevens' essays aren't much help with his poetry.
Zeleny's suggestion to look at modern painting is much more
useful.
I've never understood why people have so much trouble with Stevens.
J. Del Col
OFurorHortensis
Del Col opined:
>Stevens' essays aren't much help with his poetry.
>
>Zeleny's suggestion to look at modern painting is much more useful.
>
>I've never understood why people have so much trouble with Stevens.
>
Neither do I.
But I do find the phrase 'modern painting' to be a smidge over-encompassing.
Furor
Michael Zeleny
And so do I. What I suggested, however, was that an appreciation of
contemporaneous painting, from Cézanne to Picasso, would be of great
help in understanding the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Whereas his own
prosaic testimony as to its hermetic meaning belongs squarely in the
Modernist tradition of literary mystification, inaugurated by Edgar
Allan Poe.
OFurorHortensis
>And so do I. What I suggested, however, was that an appreciation of
>contemporaneous painting, from Cézanne to Picasso, would be of great
>help in understanding the poetry of Wallace Stevens.>>
Could not hurt, for sure. And the music as well. Very musical in an incantatory
sort of way, Stevens. Very urbane mind.
I am also inclined to suggest the utility of an appreciation of a 'modern'
tradition running from Vermeer to Rothko, if one will grant that modernity in
painting starts with Giotto, which many do not, and I myself do not insist
upon.
> Whereas his own prosaic testimony as to its hermetic meaning belongs squarely
in theModernist tradition of literary mystification, inaugurated by Edgar
Allan Poe.
>
Ah, well, I rather fancy a speck of mystification with my incantations from
time to time.
"A poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully." Stevens.
I think one fine way to come to appreciate Stevens is to read him often, and
aloud, with gestures and pacing when the spirit moves one. Cymbals and tiny
golden bells optional, but often very nice.
Furor
j del col
OK, post-impressionist to Picasso.
BTW, there's a nice exhibit of Fauvist painting at the Courtauld Gallery in
London.
J. Del Col