Re: kafka and rilke

Jim writes:
<< I agree with what you're saying about "song" -- I was using the word
"song" somewhat anachronistically. I view much ancient poetry, even when
unaccompanied by instrumental music, as "song" because, to my understanding,
the poetry was lyrical and quite often sung.

Isn't this the case with Homer's poetry, for example? >>

Ancient Greek was a tonal language, so it was always somewhat sing-songy;
but strictly speaking, Homer was probably not sung, but chanted. Of course,
the first words are always (rightfully) translated "sing goddess," but the
sense of the Greek invocation is more likely a request that the muse pour
forth the verse into her humble servant, the poet/rhapsode. The original
performance of Homer (and similar Greek poems) might in some respects have
more closely resembled the performances of modern rappers than modern
singers. (The larger cultural affinity between the Homeric Greeks and
modern urban blacks might fill much more space than I have here -- but
compare, for instance, the Catalog of Ships to many rap pieces with
elaborate emphasis on neighborhoods, abundant and detailed references to
equipment and armor to similar references to cars, clothing, and jewelry,
and the overwhelming importance of local status and perceived respect or
disrespect and even the situation and sometimes the USE of women in the
system of status and respect. A friend of mine once remarked, only
half-jokingly, that Homer was the first gangsta rapper.)

Come to think of it, I think the ancient languages (particularly Greek and
Latin, but others as well) tended to lack verbs to distinguish such things
as "sing" and "chant." (Latin "cano" can be to sing, to chant, to celebrate,
to play [as of instruments], to sound out, to recite verse, to prophesy,
even, in military contexts, to signal; Greek "aeido" can be most of these,
and to whistle, to ring, even to fire an arrow, "twanging" the bowstring.)

I think you're right about the anachronistic sense of "song," which probably
should include all verse. In my original message I was only using it in the
sense that Bob Dylan and Tom Waits make songs (and Pearl Jam and Madonna and
Brittany Spears). Ancient poetry wasn't always sung, though -- more often
it was chanted, which does seem to me significantly different, and sometimes
it was not even chanted so far as we know. Certain Near-Eastern cultures,
for instance, leave us with surviving poetry but no evidence of a class of
bards or rhapsodes as the Greeks had, and in fact no evidence of performance
at all -- and it is believed that much of this poetry, especially where
writing is very old, was composed on parchment or clay tablets and was
intended to be read, often only by the upper classes (whereas in rhapsodic
traditions, as in Greece, it is likely that the poems were composed before
writing was even available).

Shir HaShirim (or Song of Songs) is one ancient poem/song that you can hear
"sung" every Passover. The traditional cantillation is very old, though
nobody knows exactly how old (the cantillation notation preserved in Hebrew
Bibles is probably about 1100 years old, and there were other, competing
notations then). It is likely that hearing something like this is about as
close as you'll get to hearing a typical performance of verse/song from
antiquity. Is this, as the usual English translation of the title suggests,
a "song"? Well, yes, in a sense. But I think that it is not a song in the
most usual sense of that word today, and it is a world away -- or several
worlds away -- from musicians like Dylan and Waits.

(If you have Real Audio, you might be able to hear Shir HaShirim here:
http://www.613.org/passover.html . I'm not sure because my old version of
Real Audio won't work, and I don't care to download a new one right now.
But if you've never been to a Passover Seder, the above site can give you an
idea of Hebrew cantillation, in which modern Western music does have some
roots.)

Jim goes on to write:
<< I think the important distinction is between poetry that is meant to be
"listened to" and poetry that is meant to be "read." For the sake of this
discussion, I'm loosely applying the word "song" to the former category
while the word "poetry" applies to both categories.
Poetry meant to be quietly read didn't arise until the early modern period,
to my knowledge. Even when written, it was intended to be read aloud, so
quite often had lyrical qualities. You don't see many, or any, poems shaped
like a chalice or a cross, for example -- poems with visual effects, until
around the early modern period. >>

By "early modern period," I would think sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries -- is this what you meant? Maybe I'm forgetting something
obvious, but I wouldn't expect to see such "visual effects" until
significantly later than that.

(Of course, I find that "modern" tends to mean something very different to
people who have spent a lot of time studying antiquity and those who
haven't -- so maybe you have different years in mind. To me, Descartes,
Shakespeare, and Cervantes are decidedly and firmly modern.)

Anyway, I expect that you don't see "visual effects" in old poetry because
it didn't occur to old poets that such was relevant to poetry. The
distinction between poem and song by its being a read or a heard thing is
awkward because in most cultures in antiquity, EVERYTHING was read aloud,
poetry or prose. I am aware of at least two ancient accounts of someone
reading silently and those around him being surprised, even stunned. So
being read aloud cannot have necessarily imparted poetic or song-like
characteristics.

But again, "song" can certainly have the meaning you're using. It can
refer, I think, to anything in verse. By this use of the word, Song of
Songs is included, as is any poem -- and Don Giovanni is either a song or is
comprised of songs. This sense of song, though, is increasingly archaic, I
think, and usually refers to very old or ancient poems. The more usual
sense of the word today, I think, and the one most of use when we refer to a
song by Bob Dylan, does not include anything in Don Giovanni -- or even Song
of Songs, for that matter.

-robbie
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Received on Sat Jun 28 20:37:39 2003