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porphyryI was unpleasantly reminded today that when I was in Junior High School (as we called it), I attempted to write an epic poem. The subject was a war fought far in the future between Christianity and Atheism. Atheism lost and the truth was forever extinguished by superstitious oppression. The only good thing I can say about it is that it is now completely lost so there is no chance of it appearing on your computer screen any time in the future. The other notable thing I can say is that I undertook this task when I was about the same age that Keats spent the summer translating the whole of the Aeneid.
The comment I want to make, is, in contrast to Keats, the education I had provided absolutely nothing to support the ambition to write epic.I am sure none of my High School English teaches could have given a good definition of Epic, and I am positive that none of them could even scan poetry (if they had been able to, they would surely have mentioned it on some occasion, instead of pretending every year when we did poetry that it is possible to write haiku in English). I think in my senior year we might have been assigned the first book of Paradise Lost--not surprising since that teacher regularly descended to benthic depths of boringness that far exceed the tranquilizing effect of hypnosis. Judging literature by this experience, I avoided English in college, and did not read any literature with a professor until I got to the Eclogues and Georgics in Grad School. By that age Keats was already dead.
Its reasonable to assume that I would never have had the poetic talent to actually write an epic under any circumstances, but even if I had, the education I had did absolutely nothing to support it. Could someone with the talent, with that same education--and there is nothing exceptional about it--ever have been able to write epic? What would he have become? A Film editor? A graphic designer? An academic historian? Is the creation of an educational system in which literature plays no important role the reason we have no poets today? No Composers? No painters? How many people today have never heard classical music (a term we have to use since, if we just say music, most readers [not most readers here, but at large] would otherwise think of commercial product) outside of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies? How would a person like that even imagine becoming a composer? How could someone who had never read epic, hope to write it?
The comment I want to make, is, in contrast to Keats, the education I had provided absolutely nothing to support the ambition to write epic.I am sure none of my High School English teaches could have given a good definition of Epic, and I am positive that none of them could even scan poetry (if they had been able to, they would surely have mentioned it on some occasion, instead of pretending every year when we did poetry that it is possible to write haiku in English). I think in my senior year we might have been assigned the first book of Paradise Lost--not surprising since that teacher regularly descended to benthic depths of boringness that far exceed the tranquilizing effect of hypnosis. Judging literature by this experience, I avoided English in college, and did not read any literature with a professor until I got to the Eclogues and Georgics in Grad School. By that age Keats was already dead.
Its reasonable to assume that I would never have had the poetic talent to actually write an epic under any circumstances, but even if I had, the education I had did absolutely nothing to support it. Could someone with the talent, with that same education--and there is nothing exceptional about it--ever have been able to write epic? What would he have become? A Film editor? A graphic designer? An academic historian? Is the creation of an educational system in which literature plays no important role the reason we have no poets today? No Composers? No painters? How many people today have never heard classical music (a term we have to use since, if we just say music, most readers [not most readers here, but at large] would otherwise think of commercial product) outside of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies? How would a person like that even imagine becoming a composer? How could someone who had never read epic, hope to write it?
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Date: 2010-07-28 09:04 pm (UTC)