Guest Lecturer on November 1, 2004 - Jeremy Sharp
This is a synopsis of Jeremy Sharp's lecture. For me, his style of presentation was most enjoyable. He not only presented interesting and useful information in connection with the epic The Iliad we are reading this year, but also asked questions that required feedback from the class. I learned a lot from this lecture.
Battles are of two types: war and spiritual culture. To see humans going past, or getting over something is to see humans going to battle to defeat their own limitations.
The Iliad is tragic. The romantic overthought in The Iliad is Achilles and Helen, while the tragic underthought is both Hecktor's and Troy's fall. The Iliad is story of 'the journey' to get what you think is yours. There is anger, indignation, staunchness and singlemindedness, while people brace for the worst and allow pride to take over this process. Achilles is a single-minded killing machine, a smoldering force, and an example of what many men wish they could be. He is not alone.
Rules have to be obeyed in life - there is such a thing as 'right' and 'wrong'. The 5-sided star symbolizes truth - representing yourself fairly to the world. If you don't 'play fair', your identity is being violated in a contract. Every man has to be true to his own identity and this is something Achilles has to face when he has run amuck. Single-minded men have to observe gods, and gods are deeply partisan.
The Iliad is also the story of Athena. The Iliad is the story about how the interaction between men and gods becomes history. History is about community, and Troy is a community that contains many people who are engaged in the 'danse macabre'.
The Odyssy is 'the return' home that took 19 years. Restoration is about man being able to see things in a new light.
Humans wonder about what comes after the "now". Because humans do not understand 'birth' and 'death' (which are beginnings and endings), poems about journeying and about understanding human relationships with God began to appear to tell about this. Poems have to both begin and end - to be shaped. We impose poetic/historical order in order to make a shape.
The earliest poetry depends on black and white terms. The 'rhapsodos' was a singer of songs and a weaver of tales. By making contrasts of light and dark in the song/poem, it was easier to memorize. The poet was a possessor of knowledge, a re-teller of knowledge and was considered a semi-sacred person in the community, because that was how the community knew who it was and what had happened in the past that brought people together to be what they were in the now.
In many ways, all literature is born of The Iliad and The Odyssy. Prose comes from the epic.
The Tutorial was also interesting. Jeremy talked about poetry's aural basis, and how gutteral sounds and lilting sounds mix and become the "iam" rhythm. A line of poetry is a unit of logic sound. The original poetry involved the body. It was a verbal play but done artfully. Jeremy's reading of Old English poetry gave the class a wonderful example of the rhythm that works to make poetry "live". In his examples, we heard both poetry that seemed to 'skip along', as well as poetry that was 'heavy and solid' in sound.
There were some word examples we learned which were interesting:
a) "weard" (Guardian (God)), became "wyrd" (that which will be - prophecy), which became "word". The "y" sound in "wyrd" becomes "weird - that which is strange or eerie. To give one's word means to promise. We talked about the logos in John's Gospel at the beginning of Chapter 1...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
b) ex static - to go outside of oneself
__ecstatic - a purgative process to release something
Poetry speculates that something may be true. Poetry explores. Poetry require patience. A poem is a conduit to something else.
A good lecture and an interesting tutorial. Thank you Jeremy Sharp! (I hope I have done justice to the actuality)
Battles are of two types: war and spiritual culture. To see humans going past, or getting over something is to see humans going to battle to defeat their own limitations.
The Iliad is tragic. The romantic overthought in The Iliad is Achilles and Helen, while the tragic underthought is both Hecktor's and Troy's fall. The Iliad is story of 'the journey' to get what you think is yours. There is anger, indignation, staunchness and singlemindedness, while people brace for the worst and allow pride to take over this process. Achilles is a single-minded killing machine, a smoldering force, and an example of what many men wish they could be. He is not alone.
Rules have to be obeyed in life - there is such a thing as 'right' and 'wrong'. The 5-sided star symbolizes truth - representing yourself fairly to the world. If you don't 'play fair', your identity is being violated in a contract. Every man has to be true to his own identity and this is something Achilles has to face when he has run amuck. Single-minded men have to observe gods, and gods are deeply partisan.
The Iliad is also the story of Athena. The Iliad is the story about how the interaction between men and gods becomes history. History is about community, and Troy is a community that contains many people who are engaged in the 'danse macabre'.
The Odyssy is 'the return' home that took 19 years. Restoration is about man being able to see things in a new light.
Humans wonder about what comes after the "now". Because humans do not understand 'birth' and 'death' (which are beginnings and endings), poems about journeying and about understanding human relationships with God began to appear to tell about this. Poems have to both begin and end - to be shaped. We impose poetic/historical order in order to make a shape.
The earliest poetry depends on black and white terms. The 'rhapsodos' was a singer of songs and a weaver of tales. By making contrasts of light and dark in the song/poem, it was easier to memorize. The poet was a possessor of knowledge, a re-teller of knowledge and was considered a semi-sacred person in the community, because that was how the community knew who it was and what had happened in the past that brought people together to be what they were in the now.
In many ways, all literature is born of The Iliad and The Odyssy. Prose comes from the epic.
The Tutorial was also interesting. Jeremy talked about poetry's aural basis, and how gutteral sounds and lilting sounds mix and become the "iam" rhythm. A line of poetry is a unit of logic sound. The original poetry involved the body. It was a verbal play but done artfully. Jeremy's reading of Old English poetry gave the class a wonderful example of the rhythm that works to make poetry "live". In his examples, we heard both poetry that seemed to 'skip along', as well as poetry that was 'heavy and solid' in sound.
There were some word examples we learned which were interesting:
a) "weard" (Guardian (God)), became "wyrd" (that which will be - prophecy), which became "word". The "y" sound in "wyrd" becomes "weird - that which is strange or eerie. To give one's word means to promise. We talked about the logos in John's Gospel at the beginning of Chapter 1...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
b) ex static - to go outside of oneself
__ecstatic - a purgative process to release something
Poetry speculates that something may be true. Poetry explores. Poetry require patience. A poem is a conduit to something else.
A good lecture and an interesting tutorial. Thank you Jeremy Sharp! (I hope I have done justice to the actuality)
posted by maggiesong at 10:01 PM
2 Comments:
This comment is in response to ColCal's thought about how the black and white beginnings of poetry that Jeremy Sharp told us about, moved into the "grey" area.
First, I'm happy you left the comment you did. It was something I had not thought about before. And now that I have given this some thought, I am wondering if this movement from black and white to grey was a gradual thing that happened because Scops were no longer needed to go about gathering and making up the news of the day once the printed word began to be distributed and people had learned how to read.
I'm not sure. While there is still poetry written today that speaks about black and white issues (real events), it would be interesting to see, if a survey were to be taken, whether it would comprise the smallest part of what is being written.
I think poetry has always been good at couching meaning within more than the words on the page....a way of making a point, but sometimes very subtly, and only those who took the time to think would get the deeper message.
After today's tutorial, I wonder if the history of the classification of literature in poetry would show us anything. I think this would be a good question to pose to the prof ColCal....what say you? And what say you Prof. Kuin, if you read this?
Kristyn! This is my attempt to respond to your comment posted here. You are really pushing me beyond my ability! Do you realize how many powerful thoughts you have included in this comment? I have sat and read this and thought about what you have written. I hope I will not be too far amiss in responding to what you wrote.
First, I think we all, as humans, have a need to think we have our life in some kind of order. It's as Prof. Kuin was speaking about on Monday (14th) - we classify in order to be able to pull out of the 'filing cabinet', the information we need when we require it. It's the thing the brain likes to do so that we are functioning rationally, thinking with reason in order to survive.
To me (and I may be right out to lunch here), poetic order is something else, or at least more than this - it's being able to express this in a more creative way than "street language". It is like taking eggs and instead of frying them in grease, taking eggs and turning them into fluffy Eggs Benedict. It's a love of taking words and not only deciding to choose carefully which ones will be used, but also in using them to their fullest meaning. By doing this, our 'experience' of life is able to be given fuller expression.
You speak about the "right slant", and "emphasis" and "cohesion with a larger whole" and the difficulty of being able "to put those moments into a context of meaning and layers". And my response to you must be: what do you mean by this, if you do not mean you desire to express the highest of your thought with the highest thoughts of a greater humanity, in order that there is valued connection, not just a surface connection? Do we need layers to be deliberately composed in poetry? Do we need layers to be deliberately composed as part of who a poet is or what a poet does? Should the poet not be one who struggles to take all those layers and open them in such a way, that the heart or the core (the meaning) of what is being expressed is not only shown to be a rich expression, but also something that connects with more than a surface layer look at life? Some people want to see more than the surface of life, but many do not. One further thought I have at this point in writing: does the word "recapitulation" have any connection with what you have been expressing?
I don't know what you are saying in your last sentence when you say that it is both the mechanics (beginnings and endings of poems) and the human emotion that make poetry "more endurable". More endurable than what?
Kristyn - I think these are all good ideas. I see in you someone who is doing a lot of thinking and asking a lot of questions that many people pass by without even realizing there can be a place to resist glossing over what is considered the understood and everyday of life. Don't stop doing this!
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