November 29, 2007
the english do poetry
HERE are two opening lines:“Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,”
“Lord, the Roman hycinths are blooming in bowls and”
The first is from Walter Raleigh’s ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’, the second from T.S. Eliot’s ‘A Song for Simeon’. I quote them here solely because they both send a shiver down my spine. I could try to explain why – that haunting sc-sh-qw sound in the Raleigh, or the odd, unexpected stillness of the Eliot line caused, I think, by ‘in bowls’ and that hanging ‘and’ – but, in truth, my shiver comes from wells deeper than those plumbed by practical criticism. It comes from being and speaking English.
It is unfashionable to speak of national characteristics. Queasy types think it is akin to racism. But the truth is that nations are definably different. Most importantly, they differ in what they do best. No nation has produced better essayists than France, none has produced better composers that the Germans, better painters than the Italians, nor better novelists than the Russians. America invented jazz and still masters the form and, though some may dissent, her record in film is unsurpassed. And the English? The English do poetry.
more from The Liberal here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 12:14 PM | Permalink
Comments
The idea that people living in certain nations at certain times tend to excel in certain modes of cultural expression is obvious, hardly surprising, clearly not racist, and less likely to be called racist than this author seems to think. Given the degree to which people tend to consume and produce cultural artifacts within a primarily (obviously, far from exclusively) national discourse, how could it be otherwise?
That said, the specific claims here are ridiculous. English poetry is, no question, a great, vast, and variegated cultural achievement. From Caedmon & the cuccu onward, yeah, it's good and it can make one shiver. But then we get "No nation has produced better essayists than France, none has produced better composers that the Germans, better painters than the Italians, nor better novelists than the Russians." This is not a statement about "national characteristics," it's a statement about a few very specific cultural moments: Montaigne, perhaps the early 20th c. French essayists, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, the Italian Renaissance & perhaps Baroque, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. And even on those terms, it's pretty questionable: the essay has reached some impressive heights in English, and painting did pretty well for itself in late-19th-c. France. And, uh, the English novel? Austen, Eliot, James, Woolf, Joyce?
And in this context, the punch line that "the English do poetry" is laughable. Homer? Virgil? Dante? Baudelaire? Mallarmé? Rilke? The list goes on and on, even drawing solely from the traditional canon. And, I'm very, very sure, a fair list would also include a great many poets writing in languages that I can't read.
Why on earth someone would want to turn their appreciation for certain poems in English into a piece of cultural braggadoccio is really beyond me.
Posted by: Christopher M | Nov 30, 2007 12:03:13 AM
I think the author is indulging in a little harmless generalisation, a sort of throw-away statement that it would be somewhat pedantic to quibble over, rather like: "the Italians are the best lovers" (clearly, the Chinese must be the best lovers, thats how there came to be 1.4 billion of them)
Sometimes people say or write things not with the purpose of being right, but just to provoke some pleasant conversation or comments exchange.
However, I'd maintain that the English really do produce better Theater than anyone else in the world.
Posted by: aguy109 | Nov 30, 2007 4:37:37 PM
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