It might have been T.S.Eliot?Originally Posted by stlukesguild
It might have been T.S.Eliot?
Last edited by lawpark; 08-30-2011 at 10:13 PM.
Look J, you have grossly misunderstood this point. My guess is that English isn't your primary language, which is fine. I mention this only because I think it might account for the misunderstanding. My point was never "to argue about the quality of english writers mentioning the english language because her colonial power," as you say. My point was to show how, since the US is, in some respects, a remnant of the British Empire with all the cultural ties that implies, it doesn’t make sense to pretend that the US is somehow isolated from Shakespeare, when, in fact, Shakespeare is truly a part of American culture. When I brought up English colonialism/imperialism, I did so to show that the reason the US relies on that same culture is because we were a part of that history. We didn’t just adopt it because we liked it. So, in essence, we agree completely on this point, but you just don’t seem to realize it.
Any critic, suggesting Hugo is better than all English Romantic poets, isn’t worthy of the title of “critic.” What you’re saying here makes me think you’re familiar with neither the English Romantics nor what they accomplished. The Romantics didn’t simply write good poetry, they completely revolutionized all of poetry. In fact, they have been called the first modern poets. The fact you would compare “neo-classical” poets, which necessarily implies a reversion, to the great poetic revolutionaries is a little ridiculous. The Romantics accomplished a great break with the poetic past that has not since been mended. What the Romantics accomplished is similar to Dante’s use of the vernacular—perhaps even more radical than that. If you want to get technical, the great original is Wordsworth, though it must be said in close cooperation with Coleridge.
First, let me just say that you seem to be mostly dropping names while never adequately demonstrating more than a passing familiarity with the names.
Let’s quickly examine the classical tragic archetype in the typically Aristotelian mode. You have a high-born person of generally good character whose one critical flaw leads directly to his downfall. Aristotle thought Oedipus Rex was the primary model. Achilles fits this archetype perfectly, and Ulysses, whom you mention, fits it roughly.
Now let’s compare that sort of character to Hamlet. Immediately, you will notice, or should, that Hamlet oscillates wildly from bravery to cowardice, decision to indecision, deception to forthrightness; he is, in short, more human than Oedipus Rex. What would happen if you put, say, Achilles in one of Shakespeare’s plays? It could only seem like a parody. What would happen if you put Hamlet in Homer’s Iliad? Hamlet wouldn’t seem like a parody; in fact, he would steal the show. Odysseus, it is true, is a much better character than Achilles, but Odysseus isn’t, unfortunately, a convincing enough demonstration, as evidenced by the classical insistence on the aforementioned archetype. In fact, I would say that Odysseus is better insofar as he is more Shakespearean. Now, you may say that I’ve got it backwards, and superficially this would be true. Nevertheless, the strangeness owes to that Shakespeare completely re-centered the canon and remains the critical juncture through which all literature is viewed. Although I hardly agree with Bloom when he says Shakespeare created humans, I do think he is the original chronicler of humans. What Bloom calls “overhearing” is the central issue; it’s what makes Hamlet seem at once a nihilist and a moralizer. Hamlet’s character is fluid, organic—in fact, real. Shakespeare accomplished the same thing the Italian painters did: he made everything before him seem almost irrelevant. Not many care about medieval representational painting simply because it looks similar to ancient pictographs when considered next to the work of da Vinci, who finally accomplished what everyone had been attempting since the beginning, which was he made it all convincing.
Look, Dante is a magnificent poet, a giant, in fact. And he can only be surpassed by the likes of Shakespeare, but he is, in fact, surpassed, and by a fairly wide margin. If you put Dante the character next to Hamlet, what sort of conversation could the two have? MY guess is that it would look a lot like the conversation between Hamlet and Polonius and invariably it would lead to Hamlet, the possessor of infinite complexity, largely ridiculing Dante and his mad quest. Hamlet exists in more dimensions than Dante does. One of the most astonishing accomplishments of Shakespeare was that he made Dante look like a classical writer, which is essentially what the Italian Masters did to their precursors in painting.
Let’s be clear about Dante. His reputation doesn’t rest on Vita Nuova, which is hardly ever taught as anything but an introduction to the Commedia, nor does it rest on the Commedia; it rests exclusively on Inferno. Why does Paradiso pale in comparison to Inferno? It, like Milton’s Pradise Regained, fails to adequately portray the divine. In fact, Dante explicitly admits he is incapable of expressing his vision of God. So, at the end of his quest, Dante offers us very little. He does, of course, describe the layout of Heaven, but the great artistic fusion of Inferno, in which the layout is Satan, himself, is completely absent.
Shakespeare does what Dante can’t. He intricately describes the Yahweh character; only Shakespeare calls him King Lear.
When you say things like “Hamlet is reading a book before he see a ghost,” I start to think you haven’t even read Hamlet. And when you imply that scenery is somehow an inherent property of poetry, I begin to think you misunderstand poetry. If, however, you want to discuss imagery, I would say Shakespeare is obviously Dante’s superior. “To take arms against a sea of troubles” is a figuration unequaled in all of Dante. The bit about the “cameos” and the “best muse” seem like categories that aren’t even awarded, much like giving a movie an Oscar for best dog.
If you think the prevailing opinion is that Dante is superior to Shakespeare, I would say you simply don’t know the prevailing opinion.
Last edited by stuntpickle; 08-30-2011 at 11:19 PM.
I am writing a letter to Jorge Luis Borges. He will not mind to be not called a critic, but then, he would say: Yes, Hugo is one of the finest poets ever and... well, I wont mention that the only romantic he do not put down is Wordsworth. But of course, Borges is not english, so he would not know.
Silly thing, one of the points favorable to your argument is that it is quite easy to be familiar with all those guys.What you’re saying here makes me think you’re familiar with neither the English Romantics nor what they accomplished.
All this quite fine, except the original romantics are the germans and Coleridge and Wordsworth are working with Schiller rather anything else. And of course, they didn't got near Dante. Dante didnt modernized a language, he proposed one and ended with 1000 years domain of Latim. He is the Renaissence begin. Not even Shakespeare was the head or end of an age, much less the english romantics.The Romantics didn’t simply write good poetry, they completely revolutionized all of poetry. In fact, they have been called the first modern poets. The fact you would compare “neo-classical” poets, which necessarily implies a reversion, to the great poetic revolutionaries is a little ridiculous. The Romantics accomplished a great break with the poetic past that has not since been mended. What the Romantics accomplished is similar to Dante’s use of the vernacular—perhaps even more radical than that. If you want to get technical, the great original is Wordsworth, though it must be said in close cooperation with Coleridge.
Mostly because your arguments are silly name gloatings. You are just claiming how a group of 6 poets was unmatched in any other culture, when it is easy to drop several names which status and importance that easily match them. Quite easy.First, let me just say that you seem to be mostly dropping names while never adequately demonstrating more than a passing familiarity with the names.
Low, albeit Hamlet is a high-born person of generally good character which critical flaws lead to his downfall, your simple idea is already a laughable paradoy. And you know, any can play this game. Put Don Quixote in Hamlet, and Quixote would make it a paradoy, with his almost as infinite multiplicity. And this because Shakespeare with all his power, is not a master of comedy. He may be a master of irony inside the drama, but the pure comedy of Cervantes or Moliere? Even Shakespeare bows while Homer nods.Now let’s compare that sort of character to Hamlet. Immediately, you will notice, or should, that Hamlet oscillates wildly from bravery to cowardice, decision to indecision, deception to forthrightness; he is, in short, more human than Oedipus Rex. What would happen if you put, say, Achilles in one of Shakespeare’s plays? It could only seem like a parody. What would happen if you put Hamlet in Homer’s Iliad? Hamlet wouldn’t seem like a parody; in fact, he would steal the show.
Except that even Bloom reckonized Hamlet archetypical in Jesus by Mark. Shakespeare is awesome, but this is far to exagerating. He was not the center of anything when alive (England culture was marginal to dominating Spanish and French culture, and even afterwards, german culture bloomed strongly), he became after, indeed, a re-reading of Hamlet by romantic poets, found something not even Shakespeare shared (as he was no romantic at al, as the same Coleridge that praised him was very contemptous to share high literature with the masses, something Shakespeare never had a problem). The idea that neo classicism is backwards is hilarious, considering how Shakespeare owned much to Ovid and others, not mention his culture was only possible after Spencer, Chaucer, etc took to england Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio neo-classicism. In fact, Homer cult was only strengthned after Shakespeare, with translatations by Chaucer or Pope, something all romantics reckonize without fear.Now, you may say that I’ve got it backwards, and superficially this would be true. Nevertheless, the strangeness owes to that Shakespeare completely re-centered the canon and remains the critical juncture through which all literature is viewed. Although I hardly agree with Bloom when he says Shakespeare created humans, I do think he is the original chronicler of humans. What Bloom calls “overhearing” is the central issue; it’s what makes Hamlet seem at once a nihilist and a moralizer. Hamlet’s character is fluid, organic—in fact, real. Shakespeare accomplished the same thing the Italian painters did: he made everything before him seem almost irrelevant. Not many care about medieval representational painting simply because it looks similar to ancient pictographs when considered next to the work of da Vinci, who finally accomplished what everyone had been attempting since the beginning, which was he made it all convincing.
Shakespeare invention of human was nothing but a re-reading of all humans before him, specially the very invention of human that happened with italians to end the middle ages. Homer is not shakespearean, it is Shakespeare that is homeric (of second rate, of course). And many would point, there is a Quixote above to be and not to be, above all.
What kind of silly argument is this? If I put Snoopy near to Hamlet what short of conversation could the two have???? And We are still waiting for the wide margim we talk. Last time, That Comedy still holds the "Divine" near it. You know it is something like a critical judgment which very few dired to contest? (One that did, smashed both Dante and Shakespeare, so it still a draw)Look, Dante is a magnificent poet, a giant, in fact. And he can only be surpassed by the likes of Shakespeare, but he is, in fact, surpassed, and by a fairly wide margin If you put Dante the character next to Hamlet, what sort of conversation could the two have?
Are you out of your mind? Shakespeare made Dante look like a classical writer? It is Dante that did it. Centuries before Shakespeare was born Dante was know as a classical writer. The very idea that you are using as argument the "infinite" shows there is no argument. I will just say, put SHakespeare near the infinite blablabla of blablabla and it is over, as the infinite is meaningless.MY guess is that it would look a lot like the conversation between Hamlet and Polonius and invariably it would lead to Hamlet, the possessor of infinite complexity, largely ridiculing Dante and his mad quest. Hamlet exists in more dimensions than Dante does. One of the most astonishing accomplishments of Shakespeare was that he made Dante look like a classical writer, which is essentially what the Italian Masters did in painting.
Thank god his reputation does not rest on Vita Nuova, altough it would be enough to make him a great poet. It is in the Comedy. But I never saw a single edition of the Comedy to be introduced by Vita Nuova. In fact, it is not mentioned near the Comedy unless you read Dante enough. And bad readers stop on Inferno. Dante Paradise is a masterwork and most people point it is the superior part of the comedy, not inferno. You seem to think "most famous" as the "better".Let’s be clear about Dante. His reputation doesn’t rest on Vita Nuova, which is hardly ever taught as anything but an introduction to the Commedia, nor does it rest on the Commedia; it rests exclusively on Inferno. Why does Paradiso pale in comparison to Inferno?
I am very confused. The layout of hell is Satan? And Dante EXPLICITLY say? When, his deadbed? Are you going to dare to say Dante explicity says anything in the Comedy?It, like Milton’s Pradise Regained, fails to adequately portray the divine. In fact, Dante explicitly admits he is incapable of expressing his vision of God. So, at the end of his quest, Dante offers us very little. He does, of course, describe the layout of Heaven, but the great artistic fusion of Inferno, in which the layout is Satan, himself, is completely absent.
No, only Bloom does it and it should be notable Shakespeare never claimed it. Dante had no intention to describe god, so, it is like I am saying: Dante do what Shakespeare never could: he creates a Muse. Or talks with his influence. Or say that none created Sherlock Holmes. Hey, neither created a talking stuffed tiger named Harold. All failed where Bill Watterson had success.Shakespeare does what Dante can’t. He intricately describes the Yahweh character; only Shakespeare calls him King Lear.
Sure, if you think so. I never read, nor Hamlet. He often get bored with wordes, wordes...When you say things like “Hamlet is reading a book before he see a ghost,” I start to think you haven’t even read Hamlet.
I didnt imply anything. You should read better, unlike Dante, I have no complexity.And when you imply that scenery is somehow an inherent property n of poetry, I begin to think you misunderstand poetry.
Sorry, but really? To take arms against a sea of troubles? This equate to making the ideal of perfect muse, the description of hell-purgatory-heaven circles that would and still last, to the rose of paradise, the oriental saphire, the last travel of ulysses, the 3 beasts... Sorry, but if we remove the cameos, shakespeare plays will end in 3 pages and 1 monologue.If, however, you want to discuss imagery, I would say Shakespeare is obviously Dante’s superior. “To take arms against a sea of troubles” is a figuration unequaled in all of Dante. The bit about the “cameos” and the “best muse” seem like categories that aren’t even awarded, much like giving a movie an Oscar for best dog.
The day we have the Divine Hamlet, you can start talking about the prevaling opinion.If you think the prevailing opinion is that Dante is superior to Shakespeare, I would say you simply don’t know the prevailing opinion.
The six big are awesome, no doubt. So good and so famous that they eclipse poets almost as good as them as Tennyson, Browning, bronte sisters...
And certainly they are great poets. I don't question that. Blake is surely among my absolute favorites. But yes... their reputation eclipses many others as good or nearly as good. But this holds equally true of Romanticism in music. Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, etc... often eclipse composers of equal... or even greater (Mozart, Bach, Handel) abilities. I suspect it has much to do with the obsession with "emotions" or "feelings" and the almost teenager-like egocentrism of personal experience that Romanticism reveled in. It's not surprising that the heirs of Romanticism such as Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton, and the Beats have equally eclipsed the reputations of far greater poets... especially among younger readers. It also makes sense that Byron has become the seen as almost the least of the Romantics considering that his narrative manner hearkens back in many ways to pre-Romantic poetry. Intriguingly... Romanticism in the visual arts has never gained such a status. Rather, it is Impressionism that stands as the unrivaled era with the larger audience.
But we should just remember: english became the international language only in XX century and mostly due to USA, and with a big help of hollywood and american music.
That and WWII and the subsequent absolute dominance of the world's economy by the US.
Of the six, Byron was really imense. He was copied in all europe...
In many ways he's the reason that the English-speaking world can't take the Russian claims for Pushkin seriously. Eugene Onegin comes off as a clear Byronic rip-off. The poetry of Pushkin in his native tongue must be spectacular to have earned him the reputation he holds among Russians.
he is the guy, the is the pop star, he is the romantic model for all other languages... he was copied over and over until the modernists left found another model (which is Baudelaire of course).
Of course Baudelaire embraces certain Romantic elements... but he is also the anti-Romantic... the Modernist. He is the poet of the modern city with all its squalor and decadence as opposed to the pastoral poet singing the delights of nature.
Coleridge has his 3 big poems (and of course, 2 of those are not finish, one was just dreammed) and all part on gothic poetry. But he is kind of a intelectual poet, other writers like him, his work as a critic is possible his biggest influence...
Yes... his critical efforts are of great interest. I forget which writer suggested that it was German metaphysics (as opposed to drugs) that proved Coleridge' undoing as a poet.
Shelley is often linked to juvenile rebellion, which is bad...
Unless you are still a juvenile...
Wordsworth, massive in england, but never as liked, as good as he was. He does not have a easy to mind poems like Byron, Keats, Shelley and Blake have and like coleridge he seems a poet for maturity. Not maturity of people, but of readers.
Unfortunately, he also continued to churn out a body of mediocre poetry long after his "genius" had departed.
And Blake, which weirdness speaks loud to closed groups, albeit, most of his famous works are his easier poems.
Yes... unfortunately, Blake is often mistaken and admired by young rebels and "weirdos" everywhere for all the wrong reasons. He is put forth as the self-taught poet/artist with the notion that he came out of nowhere... when in fact he was very well-read and well trained as an artist. He simply admired a lot of literature and art that no one else at the time took seriously. He had perhaps the highest aspirations... intending to invent his own cosmology in a manner to rival Dante... and who wouldn't fail at such a task? But the failure is often brilliant.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
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George Orwell held Milton in high esteem, and I hold George Orwell in high esteem.
Most teenagers do.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
This argument makes me think you are grossly overestimating english literature.
This comment made me frown. The Commedia is all about Yahweh, it's the biggest character competing to Dante. Now Jesus is absent, but he's much less of an universal thesis than God Himself.
I don't know if you're just counting english speaking societies, which I assume would justify what you consider a prevailing opinion. I would assume Shakespeare is more read than Dante too, and even that several cultures won't recognize either Dante nor Shakespeare as the two top dogs on poetry.
We've every reason to dislike Dante and every reason to like Shakespeare, but the Commedia is the biggest literary work of all time, it became a classic right off the bat and continues to seduce us. It has prevailed longer without any sort of -or much less- cult of personality towards Dante, written in a marginal language, back when literature didn't exist properly during the so-called Dark Ages. At the XIV century Dante was already depicted next to Homer and Virgil, that sounds like prevailing to me.
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Why do you say that?George Orwell held Milton in high esteem, and I hold George Orwell in high esteem.
Most teenagers do.
Borges was hardly some huge critic.
The great Romantic innovations in form, expression, mode owe to Wordsworth, not Schiller. I never said Shakespeare was "the head of an age;" I sad he was the best.
Listen, that model of character isn't mine, but Aristotle's, you know, the guy who started the whole aesthetic theory thing. Take it up with him. Don Quixote the character is hardly the equal of Hamlet. Quixote is hardly the equal of Anna Karenina. There's a reason the largely episodic work of Don Quixote is only praised as the quintessential novel by persons who have staked their careers on it. Moliere is mostly an historic example of Enlightenment thinking in drama, aesthetically he's just not that important. Of course, you could always demonstrate how that is wrong, rather than pretending to divine the opinions of a dead man who lived centuries before Cervantes or Moliere--if he even lived at all.
Okay, before you offer more hand-waving, you need to understand that what you are doing fails to examine anything remotely aesthetic, which is the entire problem. Who read who, doesn't deal with the artifact, itself--the text. I never said "neo classicism is backwards," so stop putting words into my mouth. The word "revert" has none of the pejorative connotations of "backwards." Neo-classicism is explicitly a return to something that happened previously; that's not an insult, but a definition. To suggest something neoclassical is somehow as original as something entirely new is irrational--by definition. Your point that Spencer and Chaucer wrote before Shakespeare is moot. Are we even having the same discussion here?
There's is absolutely nothing in history before Shakespeare demonstrating as robust a character as Hamlet--nothing that suggests the intricacy of intellect and humor, which is to say nothing as convincingly human. To mention the cartoon of Don Quixote, who does little more than get bopped on the head through an endless string of episodes, as approaching Hamlet's complexity is just--I don't know--unconscionable.
What kind of argument is that? I'd say it's similar to one Bloom used. I think your example of Snoopy is strangely appropriate because it more drastically effects the strange deficit of character that I think is evident with Dante and Hamlet. One is obviously more multi-dimensional than the other. The fact that you think the word "Divine" is any kind of stumbling block for anyone or anything, makes me think you completely misunderstand its use. Whoever smashed Dante and Shakespeare doesn't matter. Are you even slightly aware of how to judge a work aesthetically? I only ask because you haven't yet demonstrated it, and when I actually did you basically insulted Aristotle's aesthetic theory. I am very seriously asking if you understand how to judge something outside of a historical context and on the merits of the work, itself?
I'm saying Shakespeare made Dante look dated. Despite Dante's innovation, his work seems to hew more closely to an explicitly classical tradition of epic poets, whereas Shakespeare seems thoroughly original, despite having influences. There's a reason Shakespeare's characters are used even today and Dante's are not. Dante's characters simply aren't intellectually sufficient to pass muster with a modern audience. They're about as complex as Odysseus. To rewrite a Dante type character would seem like archaism today. Hamlet is still clever as ever.
I never said Vita Nuova was printed inside the Commedia. I meant that it is generally read as an introduction to Dante and Beatrice. If all Dante had written was Vita Nuova, we might not even know who he was. If all Shakespeare had written was Hamlet, we would still know him. If all he had written was King Lear, we would still know him. I daresay if all he had written was Macbeth, we would still know him. I never said I stopped at Inferno; again, stop putting words in my mouth to make yourself feel better. I said that Paradiso was an aesthetic disaster in comparison to Inferno and even explained why. In case you don't know, that's essentially what you have to when examining a particular work: pick a particular section and examine it in the particular.
Satan is part of the landscape of hell, and as far as character goes, he might as well be a rock. Dante, the character, says any number of things explicitly all throughout the Commedia, which I presume you have read.
I think it's fairly obvious that Yahweh is the archetype for Shakspeare's Lear--a figure terrible in his power, who relinquishes his power to his children who then promptly forsake him. You say Dante had no intention of describing God, but then showing up at his house seems a little ridiculous. The equivalent is like Stoker's Dracula being invisible throughout the entire novel. Muse, muse, muse, you act like having a muse is something more than pedestrian by Dante's time. Muses were fairly stock items insofar as epic poems were concerned. There's hardly anything original in Dante having one. That's just Dante strictly writing in the epic mode. If you think Dante having a muse is some critical marvel, then you are obviously bereft of the necessary tools to aesthetically judge anything. That a muse is so central to Dante's work indicts it, rather than praises it.
I never said there wasn't a book in Hamlet. I said that saying "Hamlet reads a book before he sees a ghost" makes me think you've never read the play. It would be like me saying Dante goes to heaven before he meets Virgil. The book has nothing to do with the ghost, and you have the chronology all wrong--mistakes that seem likely only if the person making them has never read the play.
Don't pretend to insult my reading, especially when you can't even get Hamlet anywhere close to right.
Apparently, you have no idea what a rhetorical figuration is. I'm beginning to think, more and more, that you simply don't have the tools to critically analyse anything. If you think Shakespeare's plays are filled with "cameos" and that without them there would only be one monologue, then you have obviously never read Shakespeare.
Take Lear, for instance. Lear, himself, Edmund, Edgar, Kent and even Lear's fool are more fully fleshed characters than anything Dante ever dreamed.
This line, above all else, gives me the impression that you're a teenager, but if that's the case, there's nothing wrong with it.
Last edited by stuntpickle; 08-31-2011 at 02:28 AM.
Any critic, suggesting Hugo is better than all English Romantic poets, isn’t worthy of the title of “critic.”
Why? How much have you actually read by Hugo? Hugo produced a vast oeuvre that rival's Goethe's in scale and scope including theater, novels, criticism and a huge body of poetry. His reputation among French critics seems to place him as a poet cheek to cheek with Baudelaire.
What you’re saying here makes me think you’re familiar with neither the English Romantics nor what they accomplished. The Romantics didn’t simply write good poetry, they completely revolutionized all of poetry.
No one has questioned whether you are familiar with the English Romantics... but perhaps the question is how familiar you are with poets of equal abilities in other countries.
In fact, they have been called the first modern poets. The fact you would compare “neo-classical” poets, which necessarily implies a reversion, to the great poetic revolutionaries is a little ridiculous.
So is the assumption that being a poetic revolutionary makes one inherently a better poet that a neo-classicist. baudelaire remains a greater poet than Rimbaud... in spite of the fact that Rimbaud is far more the revolutionary in form and structure.
The Romantics accomplished a great break with the poetic past that has not since been mended. What the Romantics accomplished is similar to Dante’s use of the vernacular—perhaps even more radical than that. If you want to get technical, the great original is Wordsworth, though it must be said in close cooperation with Coleridge.
So what exactly is this great break as you define it... and how is it the product solely of the English Romantics... as if the rest of Europe had its head up its as$.
Look, Dante is a magnificent poet, a giant, in fact. And he can only be surpassed by the likes of Shakespeare, but he is, in fact, surpassed, and by a fairly wide margin.
According to you... and perhaps a few others who haven't read Dante. The idea that when an artist institutes a evolutionary new approach to form or narrative or character or whatever he or she surpasses his her predecessors is ridiculous. Rembrandt surpassed Michelangelo in terms of his expression of the human character in painting. In many ways he is the artist most akin to Shakespeare mastery of the invention of human beings. However, he in no ways surpasses Michelangelo... in spite of the fact that the older artist's characters are far less clearly human... far more superhuman. Even a critic such as Harold Bloom who worships Shakespeare is quite careful in comparing him to Dante. One would never read such a naive suggestion that Shakespeare surpasses Dante by a large margin... nor Homer, Milton, or Cervantes for that matter.
If you put Dante the character next to Hamlet, what sort of conversation could the two have? MY guess is that it would look a lot like the conversation between Hamlet and Polonius and invariably it would lead to Hamlet, the possessor of infinite complexity, largely ridiculing Dante and his mad quest.
Comparisons run both ways in art. This is something T.S. Eliot well understood when he rejected the notion of criticism as being a competition as the "better/worse". You are suggestion that Dante would appear out of place in the setting of a Shakespearean play... but Hamlet or Lear would appear just as out of place in the Comedia.
Let’s be clear about Dante. His reputation doesn’t rest on Vita Nuova, which is hardly ever taught as anything but an introduction to the Commedia...
You have repeatedly suggested you suspect others of not having read this or that... but when you make such a comment I can only suggest you are basing your assertions regarding Dante upon undergraduate introductions to world literature... certainly not an in-depth exploration of the poet in question. The Vita Nuova essentially establishes the sonnet cycle format... with a prose frame structure. The sonnets themselves are certainly read as much by Italians as those of Shakespeare in the English-language world. Let's face it Ronsard, Gongora, Racine, DuBellay, Tasso, Arosto, Calderon, etc... were all towering figures of European literature... but are hardly known in the English-speaking world for the simply reason of lack of access to translation. The greatest... most towering works are repeatedly translated (Homer, Virgil, the Comedia, Don Quixote) and this leaves us with a skewed view of the whole of what writers... and entire literary cultures have to offer.
...nor does it rest on the Commedia; it rests exclusively on Inferno. Why does Paradiso pale in comparison to Inferno? It, like Milton’s Pradise Regained, fails to adequately portray the divine.
Now I am really starting to suspect an analysis based on sophomore World Lit. Most courses in the English-speaking world focus upon the Inferno for the simple reason that it is the most dramatic... the most connected to life as we know it... especially in the modern world. Very few of those who have seriously read the whole of the Comedia would begin to suggest that the Paradiso is a failure... let alone one as spectacular as Milton's. A great many actually would argue that the final book is the most brilliant in terms of sheer poetry.
In fact, Dante explicitly admits he is incapable of expressing his vision of God. So, at the end of his quest, Dante offers us very little. He does, of course, describe the layout of Heaven, but the great artistic fusion of Inferno, in which the layout is Satan, himself, is completely absent.
I'm sensing an obsession with realism over the poetic or the abstract.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Borges was hardly some huge critic.
With that one line you have completely undermined any credibility you might have had.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
I think this observation is something fair, as I wouldn't say characterization is the point of Cervantes's work, his evolution is a literature beyond characters. Calderon's Segismundo is closer to Hamlet and done just a few years later.
Maybe you just don't like his characterization, but that hardly makes Shakespeare a better poet. Is not as if Shakespeare's characterization was all that superior to his peers during his life, Dante in the other hand was head and shoulders about pretty much all other authors in Europe.
He was a better reader than anyone in this forum and likely everyone alive.
I'll tell you what he would tell you "go read books".
My blog about literature (in spanish): http://otrasbentilaciones.wordpress.com/
Are we talking about Victor Hugo? If we are, I will admit to having read a fair portion of his work. My understanding, however, is that his fiction is better than his poetry. I haven't read that much of his poetry, as what I did read seemed not particularly special. But then again, his novels didn't greatly impress me either. I am, however, willing to revise my opinion. If you will select what you think is his best poem, I will certainly read it. To be honest, I am not impressed by comparisons to Goethe. And I think any conversation about literature is better the less it relies on "criticism," of which, by this time, I am overfull. Often, I feel that reliance on tertiary source material is an excuse not to think for oneself. Besides is there any criticism now that isn't thoroughly suffused with "theory" and bad philosophy?
You have misunderstood me. I said SOMEONE ELSE seemed as though he wasn't familiar.
I think if one is to try and objectively evaluate a work, that innovation and influence must necessarily play a part in the evaluation.
I think the Romantics instigated an inward turn in that Wordsworth could happen upon a cottage, have little more than his thoughts and still have a poem. I think the modern confessional mode owes largely to the English Romantics. I would never say "solely" English, but rather primarily English, which is a subtle, but important, difference.
Despite your insinuation, I have read Dante. In regards to Rembrandt, you would never think he had been influenced by crude medievalists with skewed perspectives, as he was very obviously working in the same tradition as Michelangelo; once the Italian Renaissance occurred, there was a complete shift in the tradition; this same variety of shift occurred with Shakespeare. You might say, no, this shift occurred with Dante, but the truth is that Dante chose to work in a tradition preceding even the medieval one.
I agree that Hamlet would look out of place in the Divine Comedy, but for entirely different reasons. With Hamlet, the Divine Comedy would look like Who Framed Roger Rabbit wherein a human congregates with cartoons. Do you understand what I mean when I say that Achilles, for instance, would look like a parody in Hamlet? The problem is that I think it's the Divine Comedy that would look like a parody were Hamlet ever to enter it; he would make sure of it. Were Hamlet to suddenly appear in the Divine Comedy and deliver his to-be-or-not soliloquy, he would make everything Dante had said until then seem quaint and fairly unimportant. Were Dante, however, to show up in Hamlet, Hamlet would make him into a figure of fun.
In case you don't know, a graduate education differs from an undergraduate one mostly insofar as it is more ridiculous, with a greater emphasis on "theory" and various multicultural niceties of the precise variety you seem to be espousing right now. I'm not sure one can actually get a graduate education discussing the aesthetic virtues of either Dante or Shakespeare, as opposed to investigating Derrida's inscrutable writings and listening to lectures on "queer theory." To even discuss the aesthetics of Shakespeare is to be an instrument of ethnocentric patriarchy, colluding to obscure the importance of James Baldwin and George Sand.
If you think God's invisibility in Paradiso is no big deal, then good for you. I think it's a fairly obvious problem, especially when Satan plays such a central (pun intended) role in his Inferno.
I'm hardly a realist. My favorite writers are Nabokov and Kafka. You confuse precision with realism.
By the way, what's with all the ellipses?
Last edited by stuntpickle; 08-31-2011 at 05:23 AM.
And I'll tell you what Nabokov would tell you: stop reading books and start trying to understand one.
Not really, Nabokov would've understood the joke.
Do you honestly think Borges is not a solid critic?
My blog about literature (in spanish): http://otrasbentilaciones.wordpress.com/
I admit that I'm thoroughly unconcerned with criticism in general. I think Borges is a far better writer than critic, though I will admit that my acquaintance with his criticism has been passing. Citing Borges on the Romantics seems to me like citing Tolstoy on Shakespeare or Nabokov on Dostoevsky. Because I'm particularly impressed by Coleridge and Keats, I'm apt to ignore someone who makes light of the English Romantics.
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