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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #270 on: 04:13:01, 28-10-2007 » |
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. . . the Schubert avatar looks even sweeter now the distortion has been ironed out. That is true; actually it was we who scanned and uploaded it and about a dozen other images which together make up a whole collection we have for some time been putting together of Composers in their 'Teens. It is the most creative time is it not? We note that some one almost certainly else is using that picture too, here: http://www.talkclassical.com/1658-what-you-listening-right-30.html#post17307From the version above our version of the Coy Mistress differs in a number of ways, especially in its capitalization of many nouns - about three out of every four of them. For example: Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
. . .
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
. . .
and so on. In addition our version contains several italicized names ( Indian Ganges, Humber, Jews), and there are considerable differences in the system and distribution of semi-colons and colons: Flood:
Breast:
State;
and many more examples. But it was the word " Eternity" which most strongly pricked our interest, to the extent that we spent a few minutes looking it up; with rather unsatisfactory results thus far. We shall summarize them on the "Words" thread of the other message board, together with a request for assistance from any Members there may be with Latin roots at their finger-tips. |
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #271 on: 09:11:27, 28-10-2007 » |
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The reason for the capitalisation and italicisation in the member's edition goes back to a point I have raised before about the standardisation of English spelling traditions stemming only from a later era. The capitalisation of nouns in Tudor, Stuart and Commonwealth times was quite common, and probably influenced by German tradition.
Authoritative editions of poems of this period based either on manuscripts or early printed editions will normally show these 'peculiarities': only where an editor has decided to distance the reader from the original by bringing the conventions up to date will the poem appear 'normal' to contemporary eyes.
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Andy D
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« Reply #272 on: 23:09:43, 28-10-2007 » |
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Whitsun Weddings read by Larkin (I assume) on R3 at mo. And there was Hendrix playing Little Wing earlier.  |
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« Last Edit: 23:13:55, 28-10-2007 by Andy D »
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #273 on: 23:28:02, 28-10-2007 » |
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Reactions to Coy Mistress will, I suspect, depend on personal circumstances, religious beliefs, age, etc. Or to any poem for that matter! I totally agree, but it's sometimes disconcerting to find that someone's had such a radically different experience of a poem! I can't find these lines anything other than depressing:
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
...... It's a very powerful image, and one of which I'm very fond. I also like what Eliot does to it in Prufrock. The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
(I've always read that couplet (The grave's a fine and private place) as being sort of sniggering schoolboy material - perhaps that says more about me than anything else) I've always assumed, as I think Al Alvarez said on the programme, that it wasn't addressed to a real woman - it seems to be more of a metaphysical conceit
The only 'real' woman I feel (as it were) in the poetry of the Metaphysicals is in John Donne's bed. |
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« Last Edit: 12:29:28, 08-11-2007 by harmonyharmony »
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #274 on: 23:43:41, 28-10-2007 » |
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I don't find it celebratory at all... I don't know whether I find it "depressing" though - I'd say that profound art of any kind can't be depressing, however desolate it may be, not in comparison to real life anyway.
By the way, though I have no idea where the stress in Marvell should be, it definitely ought to be on the first syllable of Purcell.
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martle
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« Reply #275 on: 22:21:32, 30-10-2007 » |
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I love this Larkin poem, not least because it's about my dear aunt, who was briefly engaged to him... plus, it's a poem all lovers lost should know by heart.
No Road
Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time's eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglect
Has not had much effect.
Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;
No other change.
So clear it stands, so little overgrown,
Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,
And still would be allowed. A little longer,
And time will be the stronger,
Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me;
To watch that world come up like a cold sun,
Rewarding others, is my liberty.
Not to prevent it is my will's fulfilment.
Willing it, my ailment.
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Green. Always green.
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Andy D
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« Reply #276 on: 23:28:51, 30-10-2007 » |
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I love Larkin's poetry, despite myself, I don't think I'd have liked him as a person. This is one that I don't know, thanks for that Martle.
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George Garnett
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« Reply #277 on: 00:00:04, 31-10-2007 » |
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I love this Larkin poem, not least because it's about my dear aunt, who was briefly engaged to him... Well there's something I never knew before, martle. I've just found Larkin's photograph of her and delightful she looks too. So one or two of the other poems around that time (in The Less Deceiv'd) would perhaps relate to her too? My goodness he can hit the target, can't he? "...so little overgrown..." [Later: Just been reading up bits in the Selected Letters and the Motion biography. So some allusions in the later poems too it would seem? God, Larkin can also be a self-centred ungracious bastard, can't he, using the demands of his 'art' as watertight alibi for being an utter shit. The trouble is, in his case, given the poems we have got out of it...] |
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« Last Edit: 01:40:14, 02-11-2007 by George Garnett »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #278 on: 00:26:41, 31-10-2007 » |
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Yes, I didn't know that one before either, M (or that your aunt had had such good taste as to dump the somewhat undesirable Philip and get some beautiful poetry out of him in the process ... oh I'm so horrible aren't I!). Seems he'd been reading his Hardy there.  Although the last couplet would appear to have been written by our very own in-house anagrammer Mr Dish (even if those feminine endings are also curiously reminiscent of Meredith Oakes' libretto to The Tempest). |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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time_is_now
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« Reply #279 on: 00:31:40, 31-10-2007 » |
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By the way, if anyone can tell me what the title 'the less deceiv'd' is alluding to/quoting I'd be very grateful! I've always wondered, and it does sound like it must be something, but no one's ever been able to tell me what.
Hmm. If there's an epigraph in the front of the book, though, then I shall be most embarrassed at my lack of observation and would perhaps rather it were kept quiet ...
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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George Garnett
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« Reply #280 on: 00:49:45, 31-10-2007 » |
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There's no epigraph in the book so your observational cred is intact, tinners, but I think it is an inversion of Ophelia's remark in this bit:
Hamlet: ..... I did love you once.
Ophelia: Indeed my lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet: You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
Ophelia: I was the more deceived.
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« Last Edit: 08:41:44, 31-10-2007 by George Garnett »
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martle
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« Reply #281 on: 09:04:58, 31-10-2007 » |
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Ouch! Well, one can understand why PL would have been attracted by that little exchange. George, tinners, 'No Road' is the only poem my aunt will admit to knowing to be explicitly about her relationship with him; but I too have seen the impact of that relationship in other poems. Funny - they were out of touch entirely for many years, then PL wrote to her a few years before he died and they exchanged a last, rather poignant flurry of letters. She didn't let Andrew Motion see them for the biography.  |
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Green. Always green.
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George Garnett
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« Reply #282 on: 09:44:56, 31-10-2007 » |
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That's somehow very heartening to know, I mean both that there was a later exchange of letters and that she declined to let Andrew Motion see them.
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« Last Edit: 09:47:00, 31-10-2007 by George Garnett »
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #284 on: 08:54:51, 04-11-2007 » |
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Another November poem (the opening song in Britten's Hardy cycle, Winter Words). I love this poem - it says so much in so few words.
At Day-close in November
The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.
Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time
Float past like flecks in the eye,
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.
And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees stood here,
And none will in time be seen.
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