Lucretius

[Kaem]

Anyone else ever read Lucretius? It could just be my interest in philosophy and the history of science, but I found it absolutely gripping. It's weird because I was reading Rolfe Humphries' verse translation, and despite that, it quite often felt like I was reading prose. It definitely had its moments when it transcended being merely didactic and became poetry though, and I'm not sure whether the moments when it was didactic and the moments when it was poetry were mutually exclusive.

I also found it kind of funny how he openly admitted his ulterior motive of using poetry to be able to spoonfeed knowledge. Boy, these days, if textbooks were written in verse, people would run away! Plus, you usually don't show a dog that you are hiding pills in its food and expect it to wolf it down. It definitely would have been the first thing I would have told him to edit out, but I guess it's more honest than disguising your motives and being modest about what you are doing: to some degree I actually admire that.

Does anyone think there is any good reason to write didactic poetry today? I can understand that didactic verse would have been useful once upon a time when people needed to remember things because they couldn't just print off endless copies. Someone once told me that I shouldn't frown upon didactic poetry just because it's not popular today. But just because there is a historical basis for something doesn't really seem like a compelling reason to want to keep the tradition alive. I think it's fine to continue reading Lucretius, but if someone comes along and starts writing like that today, I'm probably going to criticize it.

[HowardM2]

A. E. Stallings is currently working on a new translation of Lucretius which is to be published by Penguin Books. Haven't seen a date for publication yet.

[Dunc]

As to didactic verse, I always found Thirty days hath September handy. No reason to think the category has outlived its usefulness. Regards / Dunc

[Kaem]

Howard, do we really need another translation right now? I had enough trouble deciding which one to read in the first place. I think Stalling's time would be better served writing new poetry.

Dunc, I must confess I've never been able to remember that Thirty Days Hath September thing. I can reconstruct it by just remembering how many days are in each month, but then I guess that sort of defeats the purpose.

[HowardM2]

"do we really need another translation right now?"

Do we really need another production of Shakespeare's plays?
Do we really need another recording of Beethoven's symphonies?
Do we really need another art exhibition of Matisse's work?
For that matter, do we really need for anyone to write more poetry?

[Kaem]

Well, I guess we don't need anything, but I'd rather see Stallings write some new poems instead. I suppose I'll be compelled to read it now just to see if it turns out any better than the translation I read.

[HowardM2]

"I guess we don't need anything"

You've totally missed the point; the correct answer is,"Yes, we do need all of those things."

I leave figuring out the "Why?" for you as an exercise in understanding the difference between the ways Art and Science approach comprehending the universe.

[Rachel Lindley]

Ah, it's all Greek to me.

[Kaem]

Rachel, Lucretius was a Roman. The Greeks weren't that interested in scientific observations, because they believed the Earth was imperfect relative to the heavens, so they didn't think you could observe the truth by looking at the world around you. Oddly though, these days making observations on Earth is a hell of a lot more accurate than making observations out in the universe--most physicists laugh when they see astronomers throw up scatter plots of data and try to fit lines through them.

Howard, the difference between art and science is something I have been thinking a lot about the last few years. I started out in science because I wanted to know "Why?" And sure, there's "why" in terms of the mechanics of how everything works and tracing the cause of everything back to the Big Bang, but there's no "why" in terms of what the purpose of the universe is. It seems like the universe comes to us as a blank slate, and it's up to us to come up with our own purpose and meaning for it, hence art. I've heard scientists say that art isn't really "real" because it's just some "crap" that people make up--I suppose it's possible to study the universe for so long that you forget that people are actually a real part of the universe too. People creating art seems to have more purpose than scientists focusing their attention on a pointless universe. I still have trouble being anthropocentric enough to remember the human race half the time though, so I often find myself thinking we don't need to be here, we don't need to breathe, we don't need to create--but for a human race that is actually here, of course that's not true.

[Rachel Lindley]

That was the joke, Kaem.

Rachel

[Kaem]

Apparently, my sense of humour is defective.

[HowardM2]

"Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell"
Archibald MacLeish

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell

Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.

Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!--knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!

And still he offers the sea shell . . .

What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?


"The Idea of Order at Key West"
Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

[Kaem]

Those are great, Howard. Thanks!