Re: bad poetry?

I did some thinking, and I want to return to this discussion of generalities for a bit. Jim's attack strategies last weekend bothered me more than I would care to admit, were he simply being uncivil, as I purport to be unphased by incivility. But something far more nefarious is going on here.

Jim, the distinction you make between a generality and a description/summary is arbitrary. One might argue that Blake's description, without further qualification, describes a wide range or class of "generalities." Therefore, if Blake is convenient for the critic himself, he might extol it as a "description," whilst the critic who disagrees would condemn it as a "generality." Neither of these arguments really try to capture the meaning of the quote itself (and indeed, it's not a very meaningful quote; I used "pithy" as an unflattering description of it regardless of "pithy"'s usual connotations).

All this makes for uncivil debate, because it presupposes political motives in interpretation (again surfaces the subjective nature of interpretation!), distinct from the objective truth of what a quote means or what a speaker is saying. It puzzled me that you brought "religious traditions" into the debate, when I wasn't striving to discuss religion at all. (I apologize if I directed the discussion that way, without intending to do so.) Now I understand it more clearly. The distinction you're harping on, between what is or is not a generality, shifts the debate from the objective content of the arguments at hand, to the subjective interpretations of those arguments that the speakers might have. Is this not the fundamental principle of Modernist criticism? The critic is empowered, and the truthful content of what he criticizes is lost in the obfuscation.

What bothers me tremendously is that this kind of debate structure anihilates the potential for full reconciliation afterwards, and for harmonious relationships. Politically-motivated interpreation undermines the possibility that the two debaters might see themselves as in pursuit of similar truths and involved in a common human experience that, for me, is a powerful motive for reconiciliation following any comparatively inconsequential disagreement like this.

luke

-------Original Message-------
From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Sent: 07/12/03 12:21 AM
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
Subject: Re: bad poetry?

>
> Robbie --

Yep, I did define "generality" -- I think I called it something along
the lines of a single statement used to describe a wide range or class
of subjects. I distinguished this from a summary (which is what I
provided of Christianity and Buddhism to provide a contrast), or a
description (which is what I think Blake was doing in the quote I kept
bringing up again and again -- in this case, a description of a habit of
thought. I think the quotation is actually from Blake's marginalia in
one of the books he'd read -- probably Bacon, because he hated Bacon).

Some things just annoy me. I wasn't committed to incivility or opposed
to Luke per se.

Jim

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Received on Sat Jul 12 14:15:27 2003