>In this chapter Kivy attacks "the theory that literary form and literary content are inseparable".
Literary form and literary content are inseparable. Form is part of the content. Boris Shoshensky To: [email protected] Subject: Reading Kivy: Chapter 4 "On the Unity of Form and Content" - A. C. Bra dley Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:50:02 GMT 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" ............................................................................. ............................................................................. ............... 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" Which, I think, only shows that Bradley was teaching literature instead of writing philosophy - at least philsophy as we know it in the European tradition. ............................................................................. ............................................................................. ....................................... ( note: nearly half of this chapter was devoted to the history of these issues - and I'll present that discussion in the next thread) ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=WWbn4z8b7RT1yHs4J8bTeAAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
