09-10-2014, 12:49 AM
If you are only writing for the critics then I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry.
I know this thread has gone off and I'm sorry but I'm going to go off a bit further here, maybe I'll find a way to tie it back in.
Remember that beethoven said his most important works (ie Hammerklavier) wouldn't be realized and understood until 50 years later. turns out he was right, and the massive sonata wasn't tackled until about half a century later (by I thinkSchumann). it was both traditional and innovative.
I tend to agree with frost on the matter, he said, loosely paraphrased, that all our written works come from our reading. If I'm to be understood at I'm going to be using words that have already been used. that is why lit accomplishments are not only or completely personal accomplishments--we are working with the raw material we were given, that is, the language.
Frost alluded plenty but not at all in the way that Elliott did. One could come back later and after the fact and draw footnotes from any number of sources, but at a certain point it doesn't matter (in the context of the poem) where it originated because the scope was virtually unlimited. One could easily say for instance that the frozen lake and the wood in woods on a snowy evening may have come from his own readings and interpretations of dante, but there is no evidence on the matter--was he talking about death, or did he just want a nap?
and why is frost considered one of the most important men in American letters, and why don't we psychoanalize the woods on a snowy evening like we do with prufrock/ eliot (?) ?
I know this thread has gone off and I'm sorry but I'm going to go off a bit further here, maybe I'll find a way to tie it back in.
Remember that beethoven said his most important works (ie Hammerklavier) wouldn't be realized and understood until 50 years later. turns out he was right, and the massive sonata wasn't tackled until about half a century later (by I thinkSchumann). it was both traditional and innovative.
I tend to agree with frost on the matter, he said, loosely paraphrased, that all our written works come from our reading. If I'm to be understood at I'm going to be using words that have already been used. that is why lit accomplishments are not only or completely personal accomplishments--we are working with the raw material we were given, that is, the language.
Frost alluded plenty but not at all in the way that Elliott did. One could come back later and after the fact and draw footnotes from any number of sources, but at a certain point it doesn't matter (in the context of the poem) where it originated because the scope was virtually unlimited. One could easily say for instance that the frozen lake and the wood in woods on a snowy evening may have come from his own readings and interpretations of dante, but there is no evidence on the matter--was he talking about death, or did he just want a nap?
and why is frost considered one of the most important men in American letters, and why don't we psychoanalize the woods on a snowy evening like we do with prufrock/ eliot (?) ?