Peter,

Thank you very much for that passage. I wasn't
looking for that though. I was building an argument
elswhere as to how a cultural expression could be
unique though it wouldn't cater to the generality of
the masses as most of us assume it should. I
remembered that passage from Eliot, only in its
paraphrased form though. Having read Eliot only by
the courtesy of libraries, I have strongly started to
feel I should own all the books.

- vishvesh


--- Peter Montgomery <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Is this that for what you are looking?
> ==========================================
> To return to the question of obscurity: when all
> exceptions have been
> made, and after admitting the possible existence of
> minor 'difficult'
> poets whose public must always be small, I believe
> that the poet
> naturally prefers to write for as large and
> miscellaneous an audience as
> possible, and that it is the half-educated and
> ill-educated, rather than
> the uneducated, who stand in his way: I myself
> should like an audience
> which could neither read nor write.' The most useful
> poetry, socially,
> would be one which could cut across all the present
> stratifications of
> public taste – stratifications which are perhaps a
> sign of social
> disintegration. The ideal medium for poetry, to my
> mind, and the most
> direct means of social 'usefulness' for poetry, is
> the theatre. In a
> play of Shakespeare you get several levels of
> significance. For the
> simplest auditors there is the plot, for the more
> thoughtful the
> character and conflict of character, for the more
> literary the words and
> phrasing, for the more musically sensitive the
> rhythm, and for auditors
> of greater sensitiveness and understanding a meaning
> which reveals
> itself gradually. And Ido not believe that the
> classification of
> audience is so clear-cut as this; but rather that
> the sensitiveness of
> every auditor is acted upon by all these elements at
> once, though in
> different degrees of consciousness.
>
================================================================
>
> Vishvesh Obla wrote:
>
> >Thanks Rick and others who gave a shot at it.
> >
> >If I remember it right, the passage appears in the
> >Social function of Poetry. I don't have the text
> with
> >me to verify and find the passage.
> >
> >- vishvesh
> >
> >
> >--- "Rickard A. Parker" <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Vishvesh Obla wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I am looking for the passage where Eliot says
> >>>something like in a healthy cultural environment
> a
> >>>major poet would have something in common and to
> >>>communicate to all levels of people who share
> that
> >>>culture, irrespective of whether they have the
> >>>capacity to read or not.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Maybe you should check "The Music of Poetry" in
> "On
> >>Poetry and Poets."
> >>I just skimmed it and there isn't an exact match
> but
> >>there may be something
> >>similar that may be useful to you.
> >>
> >> Both Pound and T. S. Eliot, in various
> >>statements, seem to go against
> >> Barthes's claim of poetry's attempt to oppose
> >>the "social function of
> >> language." Pound (ABC of Reading): "Literature
> >>does not exist in a
> >> vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social
> >>function exactly
> >> proportioned to their ability as WRITERS ...
> >>Good writers are those
> >> who keep the language efficient. That is to
> say,
> >>keep it accurate,
> >> keep it clear." And, as Perloff notes in
> Radical
> >>Artifice, Eliot in
> >> "The Music of Poetry" speaks of "one law of
> >>nature more powerful than
> >> any ... the law that poetry must not stray too
> >>far from ordinary
> >> everyday language which we use and hear."
> >>Poetry, according to Eliot,
> >> "remains ... one person talking to another"
> and,
> >>moreover: "Every
> >> revolution in poetry is apt to be . . . a
> return
> >>to common speech."
> >>
> >>Regards,
> >> Rick Parker
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >__________________________________
> >Do you Yahoo!?
> >Send a seasonal email greeting and help others. Do
> good.
> >http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com
> >
> >
> >
>


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