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Thread: The Western Canon

  1. #16
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    I wont mention that senile means aged, he is obviously old, there is nothing new on his works except his jewish nationalism and somehow, religious devotion to Shakespeare. But Dostoievisky and Tolstoy? They are pratically even, there is several major literary figures equating both or praising Brothers K or Crime and Punishement over Anna Karenina or War and Peace that is not even fun argue this kind of absolute absurd.

    Poe is easily the most influential writer of United States and in poetry, almost only Whitman can make up for him. Repeating Emerson jiggle remarks about Poe does not help - No crap poet would be fundamental for Pessoa, Borges, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine, Machado de Assis, Ruben Dario and a few others. And I am not talking about his critical essays or Short stories. Bloom mistake is typical and your ressort similar... Anglo-saxon bias seems to acknowledge only french as the rest of the world. It is exotic.

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    'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.

    No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.

    I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?

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    Quote Originally Posted by conartist View Post
    'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.

    No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.

    I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?

    At the same time, Poe is the most read English poet in America I would wager. He is in every classroom, and even on the Simpsons - what other poet has benefited like he? The question of appeal and influence cannot be ignored - simply put, Poe is very much the American poet, and that is not deniable.

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    I would think Shakespeare would be the most read poet in America, but Poe certanly seems to be the most prominent American poet in American culture. However, considering American poets of the last century or so, with regard to Poe and Walt Whitman, you have Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and maybe a few others who don't seem to have cared much for either; then there are Eliot, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane and John Ashberry, all of whom were hugely influenced by Whitman and didn't care at all for Poe. Who came out of Poe? Is there a single strong English verse writer with any relation to him?

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    Quote Originally Posted by conartist View Post
    I would think Shakespeare would be the most read poet in America, but Poe certanly seems to be the most prominent American poet in American culture. However, considering American poets of the last century or so, with regard to Poe and Walt Whitman, you have Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and maybe a few others who don't seem to have cared much for either; then there are Eliot, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane and John Ashberry, all of whom were hugely influenced by Whitman and didn't care at all for Poe. Who came out of Poe? Is there a single strong English verse writer with any relation to him?
    What's your Erdos number? Eliot and Pound very much read French Symbolism, which ate Poe up like pie. Eliot himself mentioned how at the back of everything there is a trace of Poe. I don't know what you are talking about in terms of lack of influence on those poets.

    Beyond that too, modern poets reading Latin American and Southern European poets hit Poe too, as JCamilo has stated. Where is your historical basis?

    In terms of modern poetry anyway, things aren't so clear, with the exception really of "big name American poets" most poets have rather eccentric patterns of influence, from Anne Carson's unknown Greek and Latin authors, to Haydon's Baha'i and Japanese influences, to Geoffrey Hill's intense European historicism and catholicism. Simply put, you cannot graph so easily influence, especially in a multi-lingual world - most poets now are at least bilingual, and read widely in the literature of more than one tradition.

    Even music has gone through the effect, from jazz meditations on Chinese themes, to Martial Arts Soundtracks with Western motifs, there is a little trace of everything everywhere if you learn how the grid connects.

    And don't get me wrong, I do not care for Poe's poetry either.

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by conartist View Post
    'Old' on its own is hardly a criticism.
    It is not. It is a fact.

    No one in the english speaking world who reads poetry regards Poe as anything near good. Eliot devoted an essay to trying to figure out what Beaudelaire, Valery and Mallarme saw there. The point is that no one who was fluent in English and deeply read in English poetry would see Poe as more than a joke.
    Longfellow, diplomatically or not, called Poe a genius. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote compliments to him and his Raven. And the most amazing thing, all those authors I mentioned were fluent in english, read english poetry - and more important, poetry from other countries as well, as english is just a small dot in the ocean - so, it is a bit silly trying to move the goal higher and ignoring those guys knew english well. So did Paul Valéry (whom I forgot), Nabokov, Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson.

    And Eliot said many things about Poe. Praised his genius, but mostly: in the same essay he mentions a educated reader (which can be himself) remember and was enchanted by a few of Poe poems. He do repeat it latter. He also defend Poe from a critic, claiming the same critic had not seen poe poetic originality, and I doubt he would consider mediocre or a jinggle writer the poet who was a major influence of symbolism (that Eliot could not see why, is irrelevant), the most important movement after romantism (as Eliot says) and that was very improtant influence (the movement) to eliot.

    Robert Frost named Poe was the first poet he read all poems, wrote early pieces resembling Poe's poems.

    Bloom himself, just like he avoids Dostoievisky but reckonizes the genius, list Poem Poems and Eureka in the canon and compared Poe capacity to go from bad to good easily with one of the bible authors. So, English is not a problem. Poe is undenyable.


    I like Doestevsky and he has been mostly admired. But I can't think of any major writer that has equated him to Tolstoy. And there have been more than a few (Joyce and Nabokov most obviously) that have dismissed him. Who has ever rejected Tolstoy?
    Borges Despised Tolstoy. Latin American literature has a strong tendecy towards Tolstoy. E.M.Foster equated both (Brothers k is often strongly praised, today stronger than Tolstoy).
    Joyce dismissed who? He said Dostoievisky was a major influence for his and all moderm prose.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBI View Post
    What's your Erdos number? Eliot and Pound very much read French Symbolism, which ate Poe up like pie. Eliot himself mentioned how at the back of everything there is a trace of Poe. I don't know what you are talking about in terms of lack of influence on those poets.

    Beyond that too, modern poets reading Latin American and Southern European poets hit Poe too, as JCamilo has stated. Where is your historical basis?
    Plus it is a bit complicated when it is Poe, because his heavy language that slips or is bullseye as easily is the same on principle of his tales. Baudelaire justify more his liking from Poe (I must point, Baudelaire is a much better poet than Poe) on Poe's overall production. His tales and criticism go to Russia (Dostoievisky and Tchekhov), Japan (Up for you, but Tanizaki and Akutugawa are poesque and anti-poesque, when they are western like and anti-western), Kafka knew poe, a bit beyond the south-american/southern europe side...

  8. #23
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    Much of Bloom's analysis is a little iffy. I think he overestimates the importance of Wallace Stevens because he was a personal friend. He also overestimates his anxiety of influence theory, which has a grain of truth in it, past all reasonable bounds. I think he mentioned on the Charlie Rose Show that he thought Hadji Murat was Tolstoy's best book and that no other writer but Shakespeare could have written Tom o' Bedlam. He also claimed female authorship of The Book of Job, which I don't see at all. He makes these leaps, from small grains of data, which I don't believe are supportable.
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    That because you havent seen his book on Yaweh and Jesus. It is insane and even sionist. According to him there was no influence of early jewish texts, as if it poped from the mind of lord almithy, he ignores Yaweh early versions, he is anti-islamic (he mentions a research that shows arabians do not approve suicid-bombers, just to say: of course they do!, because it would satisfy his notion that the Quran was inferior to old testament books because it had an active Yaweh, but only interessed on death)....

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by mortalterror View Post
    Much of Bloom's analysis is a little iffy. I think he overestimates the importance of Wallace Stevens because he was a personal friend. He also overestimates his anxiety of influence theory, which has a grain of truth in it, past all reasonable bounds. I think he mentioned on the Charlie Rose Show that he thought Hadji Murat was Tolstoy's best book and that no other writer but Shakespeare could have written Tom o' Bedlam. He also claimed female authorship of The Book of Job, which I don't see at all. He makes these leaps, from small grains of data, which I don't believe are supportable.
    What do you expect from someone who reads Freud like his god? Seriously, all people who trust Freud as a sort of science, or actually a doctor need to examine their readings.

    Either way, my quibble is with the notion of Western canon in itself - generally it is the Western European Canon, which, despite his great fight against resentment, essentially begins with Christian self-moralizing and justified isolation from a far more sophisticated Muslim world. The first Canon of Western literature is Dante, not Homer, as Homer was not traditionally in the place of the West - but rather, survived away from the West - Virgil is the closest to an early predecessor, since he at least wrote in Latin, and survived into the formation of "western society" - in general, there was a great communication of civilization from Rome to Han China which included cultural exchanges - these went on all the way until around the 14th century, when, while still there, they greatly diminished. Simply put, it was the west that created its idea of "Western literature" and the "Western literary tradition". IT cut itself off, because those heathens simply are heathens, and to be ignored, and Bloom, rather ironically, perpetuates this resentment in his book, despite the fact that it fits with his "resentment" paradigm.
    Last edited by JBI; 04-09-2011 at 10:54 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Drkshadow03 View Post
    Where did you get that information from about him turning down Oprah? I did a google search and I found a NY Times article about the time Franzen turned down Oprah:
    I rememeber hearing that from a professor many moons ago. If I recall, I might have googled it too, but I don't remember the details of what I found. He is an elitist though.

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBI View Post
    The first Canon of Western literature is Dante, not Homer, as Homer was not traditionally in the place of the West - but rather, survived away from the West - Virgil is the closest to an early predecessor, since he at least wrote in Latin, and survived into the formation of "western society" - in general, there was a great communication of civilization from Rome to Han China which included cultural exchanges - these went on all the way until around the 14th century, when, while still there, they greatly diminished.
    I see what you are saying about Homer. His original Greek texts were lost for a thousand years; so there's a gap there in the middle ages. But he was the major force of influence for the preceding millennium, as well as a major force for the last seven centuries after he was rediscovered. I don't know that you could honestly make the case for Dante over Homer since Dante was popularized by Boccaccio at the same time as he was reintroducing Homer to Italy. If I'm recalling this correctly, Dante was always venerated in Italy but he doesn't approach the kind of universal acclaim he's known for until the Romantic era. I seem to remember him being out of favor during the Enlightenment, when Homer was definitely in vogue. Voltaire even wrote against him at the time. Either way, it's hard to make a claim that Dante is more central to the western tradition when Homer has been around during all of the time that Dante has and quite a bit before him. Dante wasn't particularly influential during the Dark Ages, before he was born, either; though you may make a case for Virgil.

    But if we are going to talk about displaced texts reinserted into the canon we should really begin the conversation at Gilgamesh and Beowulf.
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  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by mortalterror View Post
    I see what you are saying about Homer. His original Greek texts were lost for a thousand years; so there's a gap there in the middle ages. But he was the major force of influence for the preceding millennium, as well as a major force for the last seven centuries after he was rediscovered. I don't know that you could honestly make the case for Dante over Homer since Dante was popularized by Boccaccio at the same time as he was reintroducing Homer to Italy. If I'm recalling this correctly, Dante was always venerated in Italy but he doesn't approach the kind of universal acclaim he's known for until the Romantic era. I seem to remember him being out of favor during the Enlightenment, when Homer was definitely in vogue. Voltaire even wrote against him at the time. Either way, it's hard to make a claim that Dante is more central to the western tradition when Homer has been around during all of the time that Dante has and quite a bit before him. Dante wasn't particularly influential during the Dark Ages, before he was born, either; though you may make a case for Virgil.

    But if we are going to talk about displaced texts reinserted into the canon we should really begin the conversation at Gilgamesh and Beowulf.
    Oh, I meant in determining a Western tradition - Homer went two ways, we know, with Alexander, and Greek work in general was supported by Byzantines and Arabs when it was lost to the "West" - my choice of Dante is simply because he seems the first major major author who comes from a tradition that has separated itself from the rest of the world - for all the xenophobia in Herodotus, there is still an awareness and a dialog - there is no separate tradition, any more than there was during the Roman times when, though Roman authors were flourishing, Greek was still being read - by the time you hit Dante though, it's as if the world shuts off everything that doesn't follow a single trajectory, even if he can name Avicenna, who he more likely than not hadn't read.


    It's the same way how 19th century authors "discovered" that there was a huge amount of excellent literature written outside of Western Europe - oh my god, those Muslims can write! - just wait until you drag that all the way to the far reaches of the world - Japan essentially brought it to them when they defeated Russia at war, finally ending the idea of the West (I believe in the united States itself Japanese people won at court the distinction of being "white" people, though their literature didn't emerge well until the 1950s into the mass population, where Haiku became a dominant form. Likewise, Goethe reading Hafiz, or Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat show just how distant the tradition was until then, despite years of war between two neighbors, and even a conquering of the Iberian peninsula - in contrast, Chinese poetry essentially absorbed Persian influences in the 9th through 13th centuries despite being far more distant (at that point China didn't even extent into Sichuan) - why then did the West not feel a similar absorption of form - did it? the 1001 nights took long enough to make it to Europe (1704 in French).
    Last edited by JBI; 04-10-2011 at 12:18 AM.

  14. #29
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    I agree with all points made by all posters.

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    But you can pick arabian philosophy on Dante, his obvious influence of the bible, the cabalistic influence with this 4 textual meanings, the returning favor toward rhymes in italian poetry, St. Agostine, plato... Well, being closed is medieval but he still paints some zephyr sky. I would not say it is much different from germanic tradition, they move towards to england, which remains closed until chaucer bring italian influence back.

    But I would say, there is a fantasy about the Shakespearean center of canon, because he and Dante shared the status during romantic ages (both not exactly as popular during enlightment), Virgil was easy the top of top, from the time he was alive to the romantic period he was the model of perfection and he shared with Cicer the model of philosopher, Ovid the model of perfect imperfection and one can say western tradition is the roman tradition, they define the bible, they split orient and ocident, etc.

    But I can see, the whole idea of Western or a date is fictional. Only good sell out and not really something pratical, time and geography mixed in the end of the day.

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