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Re: Memorability of poetry II
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S K-B We are left to ponder WHY poetry is so ‘memorable’ when each unrolling word/phrase is presumably fresh, cliché-free, and unexpected — and therefore packed with ‘information’ -- and therefore more taxing to memorize?
CHW: ...googling Wikipedia on verse, poetry, poetaster, versifier and rhymster/rhymer... It mentions condensation, which I would call compression or distillation. Which is why I find the prolix ramblings of, say, Whitman or Pound so tedious. What it omits, however, is the memorability factor, which makes the timely posting above especially apt.
JM: Proust developed his ideas on "involuntary memory". Epiphanies, such as his "madeleine unter dem Linden", seldom occur ( Beckett counted not more than eight in Proust's entire "Recherche").
For me, what is "memorable" about poetry is connected with my hopes of recovering what I had felt while reading a poem. It is something related to its "duration", the breadth of the poetic experience it allows.
This is where "condensation" comes in handy and I'm sure both S K-B and CHW remembered that in German, a poet is a "Dichter", while figuratively - and in Freud - "Verdichtung" indicates "condensation": an air-tight compression to keeps a substance, an idea or an image alive and fresh.
Would you agree that the "memborable" function of poetry is less linked to "recollecting it mnemonically or intellectually" than to "recovering a spectrum of past experiences with their unspoiled freshness"? Otherwise it would only serve the interests of nostalgic bathos and propaganda.
My particular experience with Nabokov is a "durable", "poetic"one, even and particularly when he writes prose ( not the Mr.Jourdain kind, ever!). And yet, what I treasure most is how "information is packed" by VN: Although I may memorize sentences, like a formulae, the kernel that indicates both past and still un-lived experiences, remains when I try to link formula and incantation.
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CHW: ...googling Wikipedia on verse, poetry, poetaster, versifier and rhymster/rhymer... It mentions condensation, which I would call compression or distillation. Which is why I find the prolix ramblings of, say, Whitman or Pound so tedious. What it omits, however, is the memorability factor, which makes the timely posting above especially apt.
JM: Proust developed his ideas on "involuntary memory". Epiphanies, such as his "madeleine unter dem Linden", seldom occur ( Beckett counted not more than eight in Proust's entire "Recherche").
For me, what is "memorable" about poetry is connected with my hopes of recovering what I had felt while reading a poem. It is something related to its "duration", the breadth of the poetic experience it allows.
This is where "condensation" comes in handy and I'm sure both S K-B and CHW remembered that in German, a poet is a "Dichter", while figuratively - and in Freud - "Verdichtung" indicates "condensation": an air-tight compression to keeps a substance, an idea or an image alive and fresh.
Would you agree that the "memborable" function of poetry is less linked to "recollecting it mnemonically or intellectually" than to "recovering a spectrum of past experiences with their unspoiled freshness"? Otherwise it would only serve the interests of nostalgic bathos and propaganda.
My particular experience with Nabokov is a "durable", "poetic"one, even and particularly when he writes prose ( not the Mr.Jourdain kind, ever!). And yet, what I treasure most is how "information is packed" by VN: Although I may memorize sentences, like a formulae, the kernel that indicates both past and still un-lived experiences, remains when I try to link formula and incantation.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm