Chekhov's Mistress
Donadio on Vendler
Rachel Donadio on Helen Vendler in the New York Times, ”The Closest Reader” Dec. 10:
Eschewing fashionable theory, Vendler is a school of one, an impassioned aesthete who pays minute attention to the structures and words that are a poet’s genetic code. “She is a remarkably agile and gifted close reader,” the literary scholar Harold Bloom said. “I think there isn’t anyone in the country who can read syntax in poems as well as she can.”
Which is precisely why I read everything she writes, right down to what I think is essentially the textbook to her undergraduate course at Harvard, Poets, Poems, Poetry.
However, I find her attitude toward the Elizabeth Bishop affair odd – particularly because it’s based on a shockingly wrong-headed attitude toward art and the artist: “I think the ‘Aeneid’ should have been burned and Kafka’s works should have been burned, because personal fidelity is more important than art,” she says of two artists who purportedly asked that their works be burned.
(see Mark Thwaite’s piece at the Poetry Foundation for the latest and correct take on the Elizabeth Bishop affair)
comments
I found Vendler’s statement that Kafka’s works should have been burned on his request pretty shocking (and I don’t shock easily). This would have included “The Castle” which is not only my favorite Kafka book but one of my favorite books, period. To suggest that it’d be okay for this book not to exist really rubs me the wrong way.
– Levi Asher (12/10 at 10:49 PM)
I agree - I find it shocking too and personally believe the opposite of Vendler, that art is more important than the individual or individual relationships. Thank God Max Brod felt that way because the world is that much richer for having Kafka’s works in it.
– Bud Parr (12/11 at 01:44 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: December 09, 2006
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:2
- Links to this Post: Technorati
