Why Poetry Matters
Apr 10, 2022Some people say they find poetry impenetrable. Yet readership is increasing: in a 2017 survey, the National Endowment for the Arts foun...
I was delighted when Louise Glück, one of the great poets of our age, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. We featured some of her poems on "The Examined Year: 2020" and I wrote about one of my all-time favorite Glück poems, "Ithaca," for that show.
I share my thoughts about that poem again for this week's episode, "Why Poetry Matters," with none other thanLouise Glück做客!
Ithaca
The beloved doesn’t
need to live. The beloved
lives in the head. The loom
is for the suitors, strung up
like a harp with white shroud-thread.
He was two people.
He was the body and the voice, the easy
magnetism of a living man, and then
the unfolding dream or image
shaped by the woman working the loom,
sitting there in a hall filled
with literal-minded men.
As you pity
the deceived sea that tried
to take him away forever
and took only the first,
the actual husband, you must
pity these men: they don’t know
what they’re looking at;
they don’t know that when one loves this way
the shroud becomes a wedding dress.
The background story, of course, is drawn from the Odyssey. Penelope, Queen of Ithaca, is awaiting the return of her husband Odysseus, who’s been at war and at sea for two decades. Since most people assume he is dead, a bunch of suitors hang around in the palace, waiting for Penelope to choose one of them as her new royal husband; she says she’ll choose when she’s finished weaving a shroud for Laertes, father of Odysseus, but she secretly unweaves part of it every night. In Homer it’s a tale of steadfast fidelity and of ingenuity (Penelope is very much the equal of her famously wily husband). In Glück it’s also a meditation on love—and on poetry.
这里的裹尸布与其说是雷欧提斯的,不如说是奥德修斯的,据推测他的丈夫已经死了。“裹尸布变成了一件婚纱”:佩内洛普嫁给了一个幽灵,一个影子。她嫁给了奥德修斯的形象,而不是他本人。所以:这是好事还是坏事?
Well, if “the beloved lives in the head,” then even if he’s away for twenty years, in another sense he’s still with you. That's uplifting… right?
Not necessarily: it also means you’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist. A dead man. You’re married to a corpse.(Just listen to that beautiful hidden rhyme that seals the connection: "lives in the head" / "with white shroud-thread.”)
At a reading of her poetry, Glück had this to say about her writing: “My thinking is characterized by oppositions—I argue with myself, like a courtroom drama.” In “Ithaca” perhaps Glück is arguing with herself about love. Is love better when it attaches to a real person (in which case we suffer when they’re away from us) or when it attaches to our vision of them (in which case we may just be deluded)?
Glück也在和自己争论诗歌。织机像竖琴;缺席的人不仅仅是一具尸体,而是一个“形象”。因此,危险的不仅是想象力,还有图像制作。如果你用图像——图片、歌曲、隐喻、诗歌——来取代真实的人和事物,你就是在让它们蒸发。把他们变成鬼魂。
So is image-making bad? The final line seems to suggest as much: “the shroud becomes a wedding dress.” Pretty soon you’re married to something dead, trapped in a world that doesn’t exist, yoked together with no way out.
但是等待…这本身就是一种比喻!而且非常棒。一个值得获得诺贝尔奖的人!
So maybe images are good after all; maybe the "literal-minded men,” who "don’t know what they’re looking at,” are the fools. The ability to understand metaphor—to see beyond surfaces, to see things for what they also stand for—is what lifts smart, wily, thoughtful, creative Penelope above these dullard men. Those pictures in your mind are life-enhancing, not life-destroying.
We’re invited to stand in judgment over those dumb, literal-minded suitors, and maybe even to wish them harm. (Lured by that brilliant line-break in the first stanza, did you think for a moment that “strung up” referred to them? Did you hope it?) But somehow we’re also asked to pity them, as the poem suddenly becomes about us, the reader (where did this “you” come from?): “As you pity / the deceived sea... you must / pity these men.”
那么,哪一个更好:是完全准确地描绘出心爱的人,还是你脑海中的画面?Literal-mindedness还是诗歌?一旦它进入你的脑海,Glück的诗就永远不会停止折磨你。以最好的方式,她的歌词变成了一件婚纱。
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Some people say they find poetry impenetrable. Yet readership is increasing: in a 2017 survey, the National Endowment for the Arts foun...
What is poetry? Mere word play? A pretty, or at any rate striking, way of expressing thought and emotion?
For Plato, love and philosophy were closely related. Love of beauty causes one to contemplate the whole sea of beauties, including beau...
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Most people enjoy music daily and have strong listening preferences. Music – along with love – is often thought of as a universal language.
When we think of “real” art, we often think of expensive, highbrow pieces that are displayed in museums and galleries, and critiqued by the elite.
For decades, literary critics have been questioning the relevance of the novel as a literary form, with some going so far as to declare its death.
What do Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, and Andres Serrano have in common? They’ve all created modern works of art that have shocked and ...
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Comments(1)
Tim Smith
Sunday, April 10, 2022 -- 4:01 AM
......
Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy
I've come home, I'm so cold
Let me in your window
... Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
I liked this show but thought a moment was lost when Josh asked Louise for examples of poetry that stuck. Instead of listing a poem, she mentioned the novel Wuthering Heights. A book is not a poem, and the differences are pithy. It was an opportunity.
A recent novel that points to the pus of that boil of pith is On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. Poetry can rendevous with a reader, and a novel can lead you astray. The first hundred pages of Ocean's book are poetry; then, the final pages left me stranded. Poetry is a shot in the dark that hits or misses but seldom leads one on. But Wuthering Heights is another story, so to speak.
同样让我感兴趣的是Glück的灵感“不要再害怕太阳的热量”。我不禁想到即将到来的乌克兰战争,以及这场冲突中人们的心态,以及我第一次看这部戏的情景。这是一部永远让我难忘的作品,它让我想起了我对战争的看法。
Song and poetry are also genres apart and related. Bob Dylan's 2016 Nobel prize now seems silly to this listener. Poetry, novels, songs… fiction made actual. I would double down on my show post to say poetry is the mentalese of experience and the chunks of art that make literature and song are Poetry in pieces.
Somehow this show has me thinking about Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, which I remember as being sung by Pat Benatar. Sometimes sticking is haunting like Catherine did Heathcliff or Odysseus did Penelope.
我喜欢这个节目和博客,我可以再来点诗。我们都可以。