I was reading this article the other day, and a line in it gave me pause. The writer, Ryan Ruby, was reminiscing about his view of the world, circa age 19: "Poetry, I believed, should elevate its readers—we angsty few—above the banalities of existence, help us to mourn the increasingly rapid decline of our culture, allow us to place collect calls to the genius dead for advice on how to live authentic lives."
But, of course, Ruby discarded this aim in favor of something more exuberant and less rigid, shooting for irreverently post-modern, I think. I hate seeing people look back ironically on stages in life that I'm at. I want poetry to mean something in everyday life. I want to be elevated and literary. I want to live an authentic life. Am I going to have to shed my ideals and assume an ironical pose toward younger, foolishly ambitious me?
I guess it's inevitable, my natural impulse always being to dissociate myself from my previous attempts. All kinds of people do it. Evelyn Waugh greatly disliked Brideshead Revisited in later years, and T.S. Eliot, who was the favorite of 19-year-old Ruby, saw all his early work as lacking after his conversion to Christianity. And Ruby's change of mind is ultimately affirming; I don't think he did away with all of his poetic ideas of poetry. But if you read the article, just try to ignore the phrase "lightening rod."
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4 comments:
I would say no. First, because many artists in past years reach a point where they cross a "line of despair" about reason and life, leading them to forsake the ideals, values, and perspective that they maintained.
Second, because previous works exist to demonstrate the progression of a person's talent. T.S. Eliot's later poetry would mean so much less were it not for the contrast of his earlier poetry. (Or, rather, the impact of the later work is bolstered by the comparison to the earlier.) Otherwise, it is impossible to get a complete picture of an artist.
Your ideals might be refined. But one must be quite naive to completely abandon a worldview. Unless that perspective was striped of support. Kind of like an ice cube in hell.
I guess you just always need to remember to keep cold. ^_^
What continues to pique me about Eliot and Waugh is the strange way their Christianity plays out in their literary work. Eliot's Wasteland-era stuff is considered by many his best, but it's only when his newfound faith is exhibited later on that I found anything to appreciate about him. Waugh wrote Brideshead with an underlying tone of his Catholicism that many critics categorize as artistically wanting and artificial, but which I considered pivotal to its success as a piece of literary fiction.
I guess at the bottom of it all, I'm looking to reconcile an idea of beautiful, solemn, subtle art with devout and sincere faith. Surely it has been, and can be, done.
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