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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4054 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

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I think that while some certain simpler forms of poetry may be "superseded" by song, epic or longer form poetry provides the refutation here. Works like The Divine Comedy, De Rerum Natura, or Virgil's Georgics are pinnacles of the art form that would only be made lesser by the addition of music. And to take your example of I Wanna Be Yours, as soon as Alex Turner sings it in his dulcet tones, set to the idiosyncratic sound of the Arctic Monkeys, it has become something other than the original entirely. In fact, reading just the John Cooper Clark poem, it strikes me as distinctly corny in a way that the song version covers up.

Poetry's finest examples need no other assistance than the ink on the page. And they invite reflection that lasts longer than the allotted three minutes of a pop song.

Works like The Divine Comedy, De Rerum Natura, or Virgil's Georgics are pinnacles of the art form that would only be made lesser by the addition of music

And yet hardly anyone reads them, while popularity is hardly the primary standard most people use to ascertain the quality of a work of art, even classical symphonies from the late 17th or 18th centuries get much more appreciation for being truly timeless.

And to take your example of I Wanna Be Yours, as soon as Alex Turner sings it in his dulcet tones, set to the idiosyncratic sound of the Arctic Monkeys, it has become something other than the original entirely. In fact, reading just the John Cooper Clark poem, it strikes me as distinctly corny in a way that the song version covers up.

And that's precisely my point, the emotions conveyed by lyrics being sung, set to music, grossly outweigh the same relegated to paper.

Whether that's a cover up or not, I'll let everyone else do the judging.

Poetry's finest examples need no other assistance than the ink on the page. And they invite reflection that lasts longer than the allotted three minutes of a pop song

The relevant comparison is not "All time greats in poetry" versus "the average pop song".

If going solely off popularity, then the clade of poetry in vogue these days is so awful that I'd rather quite literally read the blank space between the lines. There's almost certainly good new poetry out there, even great examples, but almost nobody cares about it, and what normally gets signal boosted is primarily for pure signaling purposes.

Book 2 of the Aeneid still goes hard, even in translation. The fall of the city does pull at the heartstrings.

The closest I have come to reading Homerian works is the War Nerd's Iliad, which is absolutely fantastic, and I think it both captures and contextualizes the story faithfully more than any direct translation could.

I would like, as an aside, to commend how music and tone does add and potentially subvert the "raw" meaning of the words. Consider Eurydice's rendition of Farewell in the video game Hades versus Orpheus' rendition of it. (I'm on the phone, so find it on youtube yourself).

(I'm on the phone, so find it on youtube yourself)

Not only am I on the phone too, but I'm on-call at the hospital, so it'll have to wait ;)

I should get around to playing Hades, the reviews really are raving, even if roguelikes aren't my thing.

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