this was meant for Chris
Since sounds, colors, forms, and words, etc.,all come in infinite
combinations and meanings, and reference
to representation, I don't understand how music sounds and words can
possibly differ from color and form.
I figured that to accomplish Design,Meaning & Uniqueness, in an
expression, in any form, is worthy goal.
mando
On Oct 14, 2009, at 6:50 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
In this chapter Kivy attacks "the theory that literary form and
literary
content are inseparable". Is this what distinguishes art from non-
art? Is
this what distinguishes good art from the rest? Is it possible to
paraphrase
poetry to express its meaning?
Kivy's argument will center on the essay, "Poetry for Poetry's
sake" written
by A.C. Bradley in 1901 (and available here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24308 )
And it's important to note that the above was a lecture given to
students of
literature, not philosophy, and that Bradley is best known for his
explications of Shakespeare.
Regarding such explications, he elsewhere wrote:
"Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense,
may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and
enjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the
action and
some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and
intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a
little
less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator."
But the following quotes from Bradley are the ones that Kivy will
present and
address:
*"It is, in strictness, impossible to express the meaning in any
but its own
words, or change the words without changing the meaning"
*"poetry, in this matter, is not, as good critics of painting often
affirm,
different from the other arts. In all of them the content is one
thing with
the form."
*"This identity of content and form, you will say, is no accident;
it is the
essence of poetry in so far as it is poetry, and of all art in so
far as it is
art"(Bradley)
*"an actual poem is the succession of experiences - sounds,
images,thoughts,
emotions - through which we pass when we are reading as poetically
as we can"
*We can state a poem's "subject", but "the subject is not as such
inside the
poem but outside it"
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Regarding the first, and most important claim, Kivy dismisses it
out of hand:
"How plausible is the thesis that we cannot successfully say in
words other
than those of the poem what the poem is expressing?" p. 104 kivy
"I see no reason why, in principle if not in practice, it is not
possible to
give a complete paraphrase of poetic meaning, leaving nothing of
the content
out" ---- even if "we need not claim... that the full content can
be captured,
that perfect paraphrase is possible"
And no further further explanation was given -- so I suppose we,
the readers,
will just have to make up our minds regarding which is most
reasonable.
And what kind of explanation could have been given, anyway?
Whatever example
of a "perfect paraphrase" Kivy presents could reasonably be shown
to be
imperfect - and all that Kivy could claim would be that the
standards for
perfection were too severe if not impossible.
Kivy doesn't mention it, but I think that he and Bradley may have
different
notions of paraphrase and poetry.
For Kivy, a poem is like a jar of marbles -- where each marble is a
chunk of
meaning. If paraphrase explains half of those chunks, it's a good
one -- if
it explains two-thirds, it's even better, and theorectically it
might even
explain 100% of them, and so be perfect.
But though Bradley didn't articulate it in these passages, I
suspect he might
have claimed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
At least, I would -- and that's why I find Kivy's off-dismisal so
inadequate.
After all -- Bradley, as a Shakespearean scholar, had no problem with
explicating the Bard as far as he could. (indeed, too far,
according to the
critical essay "How many Children had Lady Macbeth?")
But those were explications of dramatic action, not of poetry, and
presumably
Bradley thought there was a difference, and would never have
suggested that
his explanation of "Hamlet" could be artistically comparable to the
original.
Kivy then proceeded to mock the claim for ineffability as follows:
"If the content of the poem is ineffable, if, that is, only the
poem can say
what it says, then what the poem says, which only it can say, is an
expression of content that only the poet can have "discovered".
The poet is
the world's greatest expert , the world's only expert, on the kind of
knowledge that his poem expresses."
But again, he is thinking of content as a collection of discrete
units of
knowledge - much as a scientific theory is built upon discrete,
proven facts.
Finally, Kivy picks up Bradley's fourth quote that "an actual
poem is the
succession of experiences - sounds, images,thoughts, emotions -
through which
we pass when we are reading as poetically as we can" -----to show
that it
contradicts his statement that "the subject is not as such inside
the poem but
outside it":
"since the whole existence of the poem, on Bradley's account,is
"in your
head", an "imaginitive experience", a distinction between what is
"in the
poem" and what is not... obviously won't wash"
