At 08:38 PM 18/12/01 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:

>I would like to hear some discussion on the lasting importance of the Cantos.
>Is it the great epic poem of the 20th century or a complete mess?

I read poetry for pleasure not professionally - there is no
poetry I would rather read for pleasure.  Hm... now that I
think of it, is being a great epic poem necessarily incompatible
with being a complete mess?

>It, in
>fact, depends upon the glosses of scholars to render it readable; it is
>inscrutable without exegesis.  The Cantos is simply not a self-sufficient
>work of art."

What a load of crap.

Given that to the extent that the Cantos have a subtext or an
agenda, it veers being incoherent and beign simply wrong, it seems
like the work has to stand or fall on the quality of the poetics,
which in the end is an aesthetic judgement.  What role there for
the scholars?

>This question seems to be exemplified in the whole problem of addressing the
>Cantos in the singular or plural form. The Cantos is or the Cantos are? Is it
>one thing or a miscellany?

Now there's a good question.  It's pretty clear that you couldn't
create an "elevator pitch [*]" for the Cantos.  So suppose we grant
that it is a miscellany and lacks coherence.  What then?

Cheers, Tim Bray

[*] "elevator pitch" - late 20th-cent business neologism.  Scenario:
you the entrepreneur find yourself in an elevator with Jack Welch
or John Doerr or whoever and have the few elapsed seconds of the
elevator ride to express what your business does and why it's
great.