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Originally Posted by
Drkshadow03
JCamillo, you're obviously misunderstanding me. I am not arguing that style doesn't matter at all; I am just saying it's slightly less important than substance.
No, no. I understood you. That is why I am saying they are equally important. I agree that is however idealistic. Mallarme was more stilish than substancial (and of course, when we get flaws about guys as good as Mallarme, i must say those flaws are minimal) and Dostoievisky is more substancial than stilish. Of course they are awesome but they didnt get the perfection or near it from a guy like Dante, and on him, substance and style cannt even be apart.
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The best literature is produced when style and substance work together as in the Shelley poem JBI quotes above; if the style is bad or even silly, as I personally found some of the imagery and word choices in the first poem by Horace Smith, then it's going to distract from the substance. However, I do think authors tend not to write for the Russian Formalist reason because it was a good excuse to write an allegory or it was a good reason to write a sonnet or they wanted to show off their style, but the primary reason writers write is they have something to say about the world they live in and the issues that matter to them and us.
Of course, no disagreement, except that even a bad writer thinks he have something to say when writting.
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Now before we start whipping out references, I'm sure we can all find quotes from a writer or poet who claims they write to bring beauty into the world or aesthetic pleasure, but I think by and large the real impulse behind writing is to share important thoughts about the world and existence.
I do not disagree with you here. I just add that a writer does not put apart How and What. They work with both, so even a pursue pure aesthetic delight will only use think to use his capacity with something behind. Of course, I would argue that the message : World needs beauty is valid as World needs food or Kill the dictador...
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JBI keeps alluding to Plato as if Aristotle never happened to challenge Plato's views on art.
I do not like to use Plato because he is indeed the first steep, someone which notion of what is art is nowhere as developed as what we have now and truly worried with Truth and not aesthetics.
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His slippery slope argument that universal themes would be a waste of time to write because we would already know and understand them is not only fallacious, but complete nonsense. It would be all too easy to counter that assertion with another slippery slope, in fact its complete opposite end of the spectrum, that if literary works are so different between cultures we would never be able to understand them, even translated, because they are so alien to our own understandings; I wouldn't of course seriously make that argument and claim it as my own because it too is fallacious for exactly the same reason.
To me you guys seems to discuss how each prefer to approach a study and I hope it does not get mixed with the object being studied. You can discover truths about War and Peace from the point of view of russian reality in XIX century and also from the point of view of significance in the development of XIX century Romance. Both would be useful and both would not cover the entire aspects of the work.
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Likewise, his argument that universal themes would act as a buzzkill for artistic interpretation and appreciation, and that they only stay fresh and vibrant because interpretations and tastes change, is also dubious. One could easily argue the opposite is true, that it's precisely what's universal about a particular work of art, the universality of the issues it raises, and the universality of the problems, conflicts, and situations that the characters face is what allows us to continually relate to the work. Not because we keep re-reading it in a new light.
Sometimes it is like that. Freudian interpretation of literature can produce a lot of mistakes. Otherwise seeking only what is particular about Kafka does not help much either.
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Almost all the points people raised about changing values from period to period are aesthetic considerations rather than drastically different reinterpretations of meaning. Of course when you go so far as to change the ending of Shakespeare so that at the end of Romeo and Juliet everyone lives, then yes, I suppose you're doing more than engaging in aesthetic changes and you're changing the substance too. However, one could also argue that such drastic changes really isn't Shakespeare anymore.
Not always. Virgil was seen as some short of prophet for christianism, there is always the Bible, or the historical revisionism that affects the views on guys like Melville, Stevenson, Conrad and Twain.
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In all fairness, I am interested in literature as part of the history of ideas (philosophy, history, and other disciplines). JBI seems to have more of a poetry background, while I have more of a novel/short story/fiction background. I think when you consider some of these elements it also gives some context to where each of us is coming from.
Yeah, I understand you. It seems to me that sometimes in the forums (which are not exactly the best place in the world for debates), because one poster defends a notion that was ignored, it was understood that he ignores all other point of views, only because it was not quoted. Often I think that if one follow only one school of criticism or completelly ignore any other, he will lack information.
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With that said, as usual I think he goes too far with the problems he raises. I agree that a translation is sort of an imitation, a copy that does its best to capture the original, but will ultimately fail to do so completely.
I often think Translation is creation. But I think you are wrong about the copy is failure because it will sound as the copy being worst. Of course, spanish to portuguese, very little is lost, etc.
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The main reason being certain concepts, word-play within the language, cultural references, and other stylistic issues cannot always be expressed or have no linguistic equivalent in another language or culture. On the other hand, I think he overexaggerates the problem when he starts claiming that the Chinese Shakespeare is not the English Shakespeare, the Italian Hemingway is drastically different from the American Hemingway, etc. In this regard, you might say I also agree with Virgil. Quite a bit might be lost in translation, but a lot of its retained too, especially the core of a book; so we really aren't reading fundamentally different books or authors. Once again looking back up at the Bible translations, for all the differences I think there are far more similarities.
I think we should approach the criticism on translation in the same way we look for a book. This means it is a good book, the influence (what is left from the original), etc. I have seen authors which translation asks for a complete creation (Finnegans Wake translation to portuguese is nothing alike the original, except the basic line, which is not what Joyce worked to the point I find almost impossible to translate Finnegans Wake. I saw english translations of Guimarães Rosa and boy, it is no wonder this guy is not highly vallued in the english countries.) and some not...
But I understand you, a few weeks I read Snow Country by Kawabata and the translation was made by a good brazilian writer (Marina Colasanti). So the language was soft, poetic. Today I finished White Birds, and the translation was older, much poorer. Yet, there was still some identidy that allowed me to relate style with Snow Country.
