03-23-2015, 03:41 AM
(03-22-2015, 10:42 AM)Erthona Wrote: In Gulliver's Travels, Swift did not forsake clarity for the satire or the irony in the stories. One should not sacrifice clarity on the alter of any trope for any purpose. There is a big difference between something being made explicit or clear. If a poem is talking about a person walking to the store, there is simply no point to obfuscate this. Obviously if this is a metaphor for something, then that aspect of it does not need to be made explicit, but the action, the setting and the context need to be written clearly or there is no basis for anything else. In the past this was understood. However, in today's world there seems to be this absurd notion going around that says if a poet wants to be thought of as deep, he must obscure what he says so people will not understand it and think it is deep because it is not understandable. Depth is not achieved by playing games with the story anymore than poetry is achieved through affectation, that is to give the writing the visual appearance of what one believes poetry looks like without any legitimate rationale for doing so except to make up for ones inability to write poetry. Not using capitals correctly or at all, nor the use of punctuation, or using it sporadically and incorrectly. Both are part and parcel of the same problem which is the inability to write clearly, either because they don't want to, or they lack the ability.
Here, I will approach it from a different way. Writing is for the sole purpose of communicating, unless one is some kind of egoist and writing in an attempt to impress. Good writing is defined by the best communication. Poetry is defined by the same rules as any other type of writing. Clarity leads to communication. If a person says the do not write to communicate and communicate the best way possible, I can only conclude they are an egoist of the highest order or they are completely inane. Not striving for clarity in writing is like a farmer who having worked from sun up to sunset, bringing his crops to fruition and just before they are ready to pick he spray poison on them making them uneatable.
yes, I agree with a lot of this. But I do not agree with the proverb. And if this is what the proverb means, then I did not get that. The fact is, to automatically blame the writer for lack of clarity is just as bad as automatically blaming the reader for their lack of understanding. It is like the way people are quick to call pretentious anything they themselves do not understand; a lot of the time it is, but a lot of the time it isn't. Some things are just difficult and they take effort to understand.
Your proverb has 3 main aspects: 1) meaning 2) clarity and 3) intellect. On the 1st I don't think of meaning in terms of factual reporting. Of course, that has meaning, too. As in "i walked along this straight thing and it became bent so I walked around it and put my body through a rectangular thing and asked for a smaller rectangular thing.' But what does it mean? It means I walked down the road around the corner and into a shop and asked for a packet of cigarettes. Clarity of description would have helped in this case convey what I meant. But that isn't really what one thinks of by 'convey a meaning', is it? And especially in poetry. The meaning of a poem is very often subtle and, not necessarily hidden but, under the surface. In a sense, not clear. It may hint, point, nudge the reader to its meaning, but this has little to do with writing clearly to convey that meaning. And why is that? Is it just to be pretentious and write something that you can say 'a-ha, I am smarter than you!' Well, as you pointed out, in a lot of cases this is true, but it is also one of the key elements of writing poetry, so why? It is because the poem itself is a unique experience. Or the best ones are. And as with all original experiences they are not clear, we don't get everything right away, and that is what makes them interesting. That is why love poems are so difficult to write, because everyone has become jaded with love poems. They are so ubiquitous that it is hard to find a unique experience in them.
This leads on to the intellect of the reader. Of course, writers can be fucking crap at conveying meaning. Can be all over the place when it comes to writing clearly. But readers can be lazy, stupid and insensitive when it comes to poetry. To dsmiss a poem because someone didn't understand it is hasty; it should be considered, of course, but to automatically say 'oh, you didn't understand it! It must be my lack of clarity - it couldn't possibly be because you didn't really read it properly, or didn't understand the vocabulary, or that you wouldn't know a metaphor if you were fucking one... it must be my fault.'
Anyway, I think your obsession with clarity is a personal preference thing, rather than a deeper insighter into the 'true nature' of writing. Of course we want to communicate something and we want to be clear, but I don't think we want to be too clear.
I don't know, maybe this is all bollocks, but something just doesn't sit right with me with this clarity thing. It just seems so cold and against the spirit of poetry in some way. But I admit I haven't really formulated any coherent theory about all this. It's just a sense.
ps. I just had a thought. I think I would like to make the distinction between being clear and becoming clear. I think poetry is more in lline with process philosophy (becoming) rather than ontology (being). And I think this may be where my objection is coming from.