Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a
writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it
nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men improve, the more colourless
man will become.”
Renard’s
customary skepticism is muted here. He possessed wisdom enough to know that
adversity in the right hands can be a writer’s most useful prod. How else explain the
embarrassing fact that many of the twentieth-century’s essential books were
composed by writers enduring totalitarian regimes? That’s no defense of crime
or despots; rather, an acknowledgement of the inscrutable tenacity of talent and genius.
So what are
the artistic benefits of democracy? Less than a year after the assassination of
President Kennedy, Basic Books published Of
Poetry and Power: Poems Occasioned by the Presidency and by the Death of John
F. Kennedy. God, it’s awful. Few books are so painfully embarrassing to
read. The editors assemble seventy-eight poems, many by the big names of the
day and all of them wretchedly bad. In their introduction, after noting the flood of
poetry written following President Lincoln’s assassination a century earlier,
the editors tell us, “If traditional elegiac forms are no longer available,
elegiac feeling and expression still are.” For “elegiac feeling” read “self-indulgent
posturing.”
That’s the
problem. Nearly every poem in the collection is not about the assassination but
the poet’s reaction to it. The recurrent theme is his or her mournful
sensitivity. Pomposity and bathos vie for pride of place. The degeneration of
poetry and literary standards in general was already well underway sixty years
ago. Momentous public events tend to bring out the flatulent in all of us,
poets most of all. Unless your name is John Dryden or Jonathan Swift, you
probably ought to stay away from such things.
Later in the
journal passage cited above, Renard, a wise man, writes: “The saddest moments:
when you start to believe that all wisdom is a hoax.”
[The Renard
passage is taken from Journal 1887-1910
(trans. Theo Cuffe, selected and introduced by Julian Barnes, riverrun, 2020).]
3 comments:
"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." - Jules Renard (1864-1910)
My kinda guy.
I can't remember the title of the poem that Richard Eberhardt wrote about the assassination (and I wouldn't know whether it was included in the anthology you mention), but it's one of the worst poems I've ever read.
To mark the 60th anniversary of his death, I'm reading "The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature" by C. S. Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). I believe this was his last completed book, published just a few months after his death.
Just arrived: "The Irish Novelists, 1800-1850" by Thomas Flanagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Looks interesting.
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