Sounds to me like D.D. is imaginationless, and sententious.
Probably one of the groupies in the bunch that wanted to
bury Eliot because he became a Christian. Obviously Christians
are not humanistic enough to write significant poetry.
One has to be mythless (i.e. superstitionless) in order to
handle myth properly.

Cheers,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Armstrong [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 1:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question about 'La Figlia che Piange'


>
>It struck me that you were referring to the erosionless/oceanless critique
as
>it had been written by Donoghue since I read it in Davie.  Here is an
excerpt:
>
>"" Emotionless"--how? "Oceanless"--grotesque!  "Erosionless"--does he
>mean "uneroded"?  And "movement...pain...painless....motionless"--our
>confidence in the poet has by this time been so undermined that we cannot,
in
>justice to ourselves, take this as anything but incantatory gibberish."
>It's on
>page 195 of the collection of critical essays by Kenner--published in 1962.
>
>Zaneta

   Wow, Davie isn't shy, is he? Donoghue, either, assuming that that is who
Gunnar meant by "D.D". (Davie is also D.D.):

 > this is how D.D. puts it:

 > "(...), but for an artist whose vocational concern was speech, there is
no
 > excusing the coinage of "oceanless", "emotionless", and "devotionless".
The
 > OED gives a certain pale authority to "emotionless", but when Eliot
writes
 > the trailing

 > Consequence of further days and hours,
 > While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
 > Years of living among the breakage
 >Of what was believed in as the most reliable-
 > And therefore the fittest for renunciation...

 > I do not know what he means by emotion taking to itself the emotionless
 >years. (...)"

   To paraphrase Eliot, is there anything wrong with D.D., any D.D., not
knowing what these lines mean? Of all the possible explanations for this
lack of understanding on the part of D.D. (you see my prejudice), isn't it
a tiny bit presumptuous to point the finger at the poet? Eliot, one of the
most difficult poets of our or any time,  said he stands or falls the
FQ.  D.D. (all D.D.'s) probably needs to take another run or three at these
lines.

Ken A.