Relativism and Western literature

So now we are using Nietzschean categories Rod? Shame on you.

I really agree with this post. In the West, so much of our literature has centered on our own disappointment in ourselves and fatigue with prosperity. Those are important themes, but the most beautiful writing (and music) still come from places where people struggle to survive, love, and forgive--where they don't have the luxury of constant self-scrutiny.

I think, Rod, that Kevin is referring to your use of the terms "Apollonian" and "Dionysiac", which, at least with regard to literary criticism, go back to Nietzsche.

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One of the problems I have with all this Western-culture bashing is this: where else but in the West is the culture so open and inviting to outside influences and experiences? What are the chances that the old African man would have been invited to speak at a poetry symposium in China? In the Islamic world? Or in any of the third-world countries about which the Left rhapsodizies, including perhaps his own?

I also love how Frum laments the fall of "stage arts" while condemning the high number of pings for Battlestar Galactica. I suppose if it's on the TV, it cannot be art.

*rolls eyes*

Shakespeare was Pop Culture in his day. Vergil's lines are found scrawled into whorehouse walls. And damn it, some of the best literary work of the last twenty years has been in graphic novel format. ("Maus" anyone" "Sandman"?)

In response to Jacobs:

1. Are those books being taught in a lower division course or upper? If an upper division elective, fine. If in a lower division course, then I would say what happened to the notion of a core curriculum that has as one of its purpose the passing on of Western civilization.

2. We should not be looking only at individual entertainment or satisfaction, but preserving a culture that binds a people together, through the transmission of common stories. There are many things working against that ideal (TV and mass entertainment, the loss of community, and so on), but this should be acknowledged.

3. Literature being a minority taste? Perhaps--but even those who are part of the intellectual elite should have texts in common, since it is incumbent upon them to preserve the less accessible works of Western civilization. Perhaps we cannot turn back the loss of an oral culture and its replacement by a written culture in our schools--still we should ask the question of whether higher education is serving the good of the local community, or adding to its fragmentation.

4. Finally, as a part of a liberal education, the study of literature plays an ancillary role, not a primary one.

One of the things which drives me nuts is not looking towards the best of other culture's literature, but the tendency to pick some of the worst of our own literature for people to read in high school and college simply because it's "edgy" or "challenging" or something people today can supposedly relate to.

I was a lit major in college and I found studying the classics of western literature and the best of other cultures to both be essential. We generally have such a poor grasp of where we came from these days that reading the classics can be an invaluable tool for helping us to see where we come from. To see that the ideas espoused by those who came before us are still in use and relevant today helps to give us a sense of heritage which is largely missing from our culture today.

However, reading works from other cultures was just as important to me. Because it can be so hard to really see your own culture from within, it is not only helpful, but I would say essential to be exposed to those who do not think like you do. The contrasts help to show us who we are in ways that are often hard to see otherwise. Plus, we all need to be made aware that admirable though our own way of life can be, it is by no means the only way of life. To only study one's own cultural products leaves you in danger of being a self-righteous, delusional nincompoop.

Elizabeth Anne: Vergil's lines are found scrawled into whorehouse walls.

As one who was once a stranger neither to the Bucolics nor the Bordellos, I would crave your indulgence in furnishing a dozen or two unambiguous citations in evidence of your most astonishing asseveration. CIL refs are of course de rigueur as I am sure you would acknowledge.

Wake up, Roland - it's time for your schlepping pill...

Jacobs: "I would give up the complete works of John Updike and Philip roth for Anita Desai's 'Clear Light of Day,' Chinua Achebe's 'Arrow of God,' and a handful of the gently brilliant comic novels of R.K. Narayan."

I recently perused the annual "Editors' Choice"/"Best Books of the Year" lists from The New York Times Book Review, dating back to 1981, to see which authors figured most often among the 300 or so titles Gothamite book lovers could not afford to miss if they knew what was good for them. With the exception of the prolific Canadian short-story mistress Alice Munro, who led with eight collections, guess who led the pack, with seven titles apiece. Yep, John Updike (no relation to the Dutch-boy folk-hero Jan Finger Updyck) and Philip Roth (no relation to Fill-Up Broth, the Gold Standard in boullion so rich - he's a doctor, you know - it'll have you loosening your Borscht Belt in a Newark minute; a division of Eater's Digest Condensed Soups). I tried my best, back in '86, to get the readers of NR to try London's Times Literary Supplement instead, for much more of a wide-angle vista on world literature and scholarship alike. The Rx still holds. I'd recommend snapping up used copies of The Reader's Adviser from the 1970s and 1980s as well: their remarkably comprehensive coverage of world authors, with each entry chockablock with tantalizing annotated snippets and reviews, will have you making notes, mental and written, for decades.

Jacobs mentioned the Indian-born fictionette Anita Desai, whose name will always recall to me a lovable rogue named Norman, with whom I worked at Brentano's Pentagon City early in my bookselling decade of the '90s:

"Anita Desai, and so I said, 'Ahhhhhh...'"

No argument there, Roland.

I meant to invite you, Roland, weeks ago, to join our Wordpress group-blog Alexandria, home of several invited CC commenters for a year now. I can vouch for the fact that you will have a near-complete freedom to post as you please, as long as you do so at least once a month. Inquire within if interested: there are no party lines.

I don't think this has much to do with "western versus non-western." As far as poetry, and poetic prose, its best authors are, and always have been, people who've led what I like to call "interesting lives." This usually means struggle, loss, conflict, and uprooting. It's not terribly fun to experience, but it fuels you if you have the gifts of an artist. Those who've led more "comfortable lives," particularly those who've never even felt the siren call of adventure singing in their bones, don't tend to be as good at poetry. Poetry is a kind of a madness - not to patronize people who actually suffer mental illness - but it's literally a way of seeing things as they are not, in order to get at what they are.

Also, Africans who speak English - and it is one of the official languages in at least a dozen African countries - do something really outstanding with the language. Seriously. Their imagery is so unexpected, and so vibrant. They have these turns of phrase that make you think English has been pulled out from under you, and re-thought by someone more brilliant. I've read a number of basic news editorials from Nigerian and Kenyan papers and was delighted by the language. They've taken it and made it their own. Which is just one of the delights of language, in general. Its speakers own it, and the same language can be owned by so many sets of people, who can each make it what they will, without even changing it from the recognizable. Some of this is from the imprint of their own language, but most is from the imprint of their non-verbal point-of-view.

Roland, the fact that you call it a surprising assertion suggests that you exaggerate. *she says with a grin* As you well know, there is no index to the CIL. Google "Arma virumque cano" and "graffiti" and you'll get several hundred references: lines from the poem have been found in several dozen sites. I may be wrong about the brothel in Pompey: I'm far from my University library and can't check myself. They were definitely found on the walls of the fullery, a few bars, several alleys... The point being, "Great Western Literature" has always had a component of what we now dismissively call "Pop Culture".

Africans who speak English - and it is one of the official languages in at least a dozen African countries - do something really outstanding with the language. Seriously. Their imagery is so unexpected, and so vibrant. They have these turns of phrase that make you think English has been pulled out from under you, and re-thought by someone more brilliant.

Agreed. This is also why I love bad translations, the ones that are almost completely literal and don't try for "dynamic equivalency". You get to hear the fascinating idioms of a different language that don't make any sense at first to, say, an English speaker, until suddenly the meaning hits you, your world is tilted slightly, and you get to see the universe from an entirely different, yet still beautifully rational, point of view. It's a trip.