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Is poetry still possible?
The
Nobel Prize has been awarded this year for the seventy-fifth time,
if I am not misinformed. And if there are many scientists and writers
who have earned this prestigious recognition, the number of those
who are living and still working is much smaller. Some of them are
present here and I extend my greetings and best wishes to them. According
to widespread opinion, the work of soothsayers who are not always
reliable, this year or in the years which can be considered imminent,
the entire world (or at least that part of the world which can be
said to be civilized) will experience a historical turning of colossal
proportions. It is obviously not a question of an eschatological turning,
of the end of man himself, but of the advent of a new social harmony
of which there are presentiments only in the vast domains of Utopia.
At the date of the event the Nobel Prize will be one hundred years
old and only then will it be possible to make a complete balance sheet
of what the Nobel Foundation and the connected prize have contributed
to the formation of a new system of community life, be it that of
universal well-being or malaise, but of such an extent as to put an
end, at least for many centuries, to the centuries-long diatribe on
the meaning of life. I refer to human life and not to the appearance
of the amino-acids which dates back several thousand million years,
substances which made possible the apparition of man and perhaps already
contained the project of him. In this case how long the step of the
deus absconditus is! But I do not intend to stray from my subject
and I wonder if the conviction on which the statute of the Nobel Prize
is based is justified: and that is that sciences, not all on the same
level, and literary works have contributed to the spread and defence
of new values in a broad "humanistic" sense. The response is certainly
affirmative. The register of the names of those who, having given
something to humanity, have received the coveted recognition of the
Nobel Prize would be long. But infinitely more numerous and practically
impossible to identify would be the legion, the army of those who
work for humanity in infinite ways even without realizing it and who
never aspire to any possible prize because they have not written works,
acts or academic treatises and have never thought of "making the presses
groan", as the Italian expression says. There certainly exists an
army of pure, immaculate souls, and they are an obstacle (certainly
insufficient) to the spread of that utilitarian spirit which in various
degrees is pushed to the point of corruption, crime and every form
of violence and intolerance. The academicians of Stockholm have often
said no to intolerance, cruel fanaticism and that persecuting spirit
which turns the strong against the weak, oppressors against the oppressed.
This is true particularly in their choice of literary works, works
which can sometimes be murderous, but never like that atomic bomb
which is the most mature fruit of the eternal tree of evil.
I will not insist on this point because I am neither a philosopher,
sociologist nor moralist.
I have written poems and for this I have been awarded a prize. But
I have also been a librarian, translator, literary and musical critic
and even unemployed because of recognized insufficiency of loyalty
to a regime which I could not love. A few days ago a foreign journalist
came to visit me and she asked me, "How did you distribute so many
different activities? So many hours for poetry, so many hours for
translation, so many for clerical activity and so many for life?"
I tried to explain to her that it is to plan a lifetime as one plans
an industrial project. In the world there is a large space for the
useless, and indeed one of the dangers of our time is that mechandizing
of the useless to which the very young are particularly sensitive.
At any rate I am here because I have written poems. A completely useless
product, but hardly ever harmful and this is one of its characteristics
of nobility. But it is not the only one, since poetry is a creation
or a sickness which is absolutely endemic and incurable.
I
am here because I have written poems: six volumes, in addition to
innumerable translations and critical essays. They have said that
it is a small production, perhaps supposing that the poet is a producer
of merchandise; the machines must be utilized to the full extent.
Fortunately, poetry is not merchandise. It is a phenomenon of which
we know very little, so much so that two philosophers as different
as Croce, a historicist and idealist, and Gilson, a Catholic, are
in agreement in considering it impossible to write a history of poetry.
For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it
is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering
of the first tribal music. Only much later could speech and music
be written in some way and differentiated. Written poetry appears,
but the relationship in common with music makes itself felt. Poetry
tends to open in architectonic forms, there arise the meters, the
strophes, the so-called fixed forms. Already in the Nibelungenlied
and then in Romance epic cycles, the true material of poetry is sound.
But a poem which also addresses itself to the eye will not be long
in appearing with the Provencal poets. Slowly poetry becomes visual
because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts
into one. Naturally the formal structures made up a large part of
poetic visibility. After the invention of printing, poetry becomes
vertical, does not fill the white space completely, it is rich in
new paragraphs and repetitions. Even certain empty spaces have a value.
Prose, which occupies all the space and does not give indications
of its pronounceability, is very different. And at this point the
metrical structures can be an ideal instrument for the art of narration,
that is for the novel. This is the case for that narrative instrument
which is the eight-line stanza, a form which was already a fossile
in the early Nineteenth Century in spite of the success of Byron's
Don Juan (a poem which remained half-finished).
But towards the end of the Nineteenth Century, the fixed forms of
poetry no longer satisfied the eye or the ear. An analogous observation
can be made for English blank verse and for the corresponding verse
form, endecasillabo sciolto. And in the meantime painting was
making great strides towards the dissolution of naturalism, and the
repercussion was immediate in pictorial art. Thus with a long process,
which would require too much time to describe here, one arrived at
the conclusion that it was impossible to reproduce reality, real objects,
thus creating useless duplicates: but there are displayed in vitro
or even life-size the objects or figures of which Caravaggio or Rembrandt
would have presented a facsimile, a masterpiece. At the great exhibition
in Venice years ago the portrait of a mongoloid was displayed: the
subject was très déutant, but why not? Art can justify
everything. Expect that upon approaching it, one discovered that it
was not a portrait but the unfortunate himself, in flesh and blood.
The experiment was then interrupted manu militari, but in a
strictly theoretical context it was completely justified. For many
years critics with university chairs had preached the absolute necessity
of the death of art, waiting for who knows what palingenesis or resurrection,
of which the signs could not be glimpsed.
What conclusion can be drawn from such facts? Evidently the arts,
all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense
of the word. Art is the production of objects for consumption, to
be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will
have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.
The example I cite could be extended to the exclusively noisy and
undifferentiated music listened to in those places where millions
of young people gather to exorcize the horror of their solitude. But
why more than ever has civilized man reached the point of having horror
of himself?
Obviously
I foresee the objections. We must not bring in the illnesses of society,
which have perhaps always existed, but were little known because the
former means of communication did not permit us to know and diagnose
the illness. It alarms me that a sort of general Doomsday atmosphere
accompanies an ever more wide-spread comfort, that well-being (there
where it exists, that is in limited areas of the world) has the livid
features of desperation. Against the dark background of this contemporary
civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose
their identity. Mass communication, radio, and especially television,
have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility
of solitude and reflection. Time becomes more rapid, works of a few
years ago seem "dated" and the need the artist has to be listened
to sooner or later becomes a spasmodic need of the topical, of the
immediate. Whence the new art of our time which is the spectacle,
a not necessarily theatrical exhibition in which the rudiments of
every art are present and which effects a kind of psychic massage
on the spectator or listener or reader as the case may be. The deus
ex machina of this new heap is the director. His purpose is not
only to co-ordinate scenic arrangements, but to give intentions to
works which have none or have had other ones. There is a great sterility
in all this, an immense lack of confidence in life. In such a landscape
of hysterical exhibitionism what can be place of poetry, the most
discrete of arts, be? So-called lyrical poetry is work, the fruit
of solitude and accumulated impressions. This is still true today
but in rather limited cases. We have however more numerous cases in
which the self-proclaimed poet falls into step with new times. Poetry
then becomes acoustic and visual. The words splash in all directions,
like the explosion of a grenade, there is no true meaning, but a verbal
earthquake with many epicenters. Decipherment is not necessary, in
many cases the aid of the psychoanalyst may help. Since the visual
aspect prevails, the poem becomes translatable, and this is a new
phenomenon in the history of esthetics. This does not mean that the
new poets are schizoid. Some of them can write classically traditional
verse and pseudo-verses devoid of any sense. There is also poetry
written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd.
This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are
in power. And such athletes of poetic vocalism are not always devoid
of talent. I will cite such a case and I beg your pardon if it is
also a case which concerns me personally. But the fact, if it is true,
demonstrates that by now there exist two types of poetry in cohabitation,
one of which is for immediate consumption and dies as soon as it is
expressed, while the other can sleep quietly. One day it will awaken,
if it has the strength to do so.
True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown
and which only a few initiated people know. However, poetry does not
live solely in books or in school anthologies. The poet does not know
and often will never know his true receiver. I will give you a personal
example. In the archives of Italian newspapers there are the obituary
articles for men who are still alive and active. These articles are
called "crocodiles". A few years ago at the Corriere della Sera
I discovered my "crocodile", signed by Taulero Zulberti, critic, translator
and polyglot. He states that the great poet Majakovsky, having read
one or more of my poems translated into Russian, said: "Here is a
poet I like. I would like to be able to read him in Italian." The
episode is not improbable. My first verses began to circulate in 1925
and Majakovsky (who travelled in the United States and elsewhere as
well) committed suicide in 1930.
Majakovsky was a poet with a pantograph, with a megaphone. If he said
such words I can say that my poems had found, by crooked and unforeseeable
paths, their receiver.
Do not believe, however, that I have a solipsistic idea of poetry.
The idea of writing for the so-called happy few was never mine. In
reality art is always for everyone and for no one. But what remains
unforeseeable is its true begetter, its receiver. Spectacle-art, mass
art, art which wants to produce a sort of physical-psychical message
on a hypothetical user, has infinite roads in front of it because
the population of the world is in continuous growth. But its limit
is absolute void. It is possible to frame and exhibit a pair of slippers
(I myself have seen mine in that condition), but a landscape, a lake
or any great natural spectacle cannot be displayed under glass.
Lyrical poetry has certainly broken its barriers. There is poetry
even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian
or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more
or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have
no connection with poetry. But this signifies little or nothing. The
world is growing, no one can say what its future will be. But it is
not credible that mass culture, with its ephemeral and brittle character,
will not produce, through necessary repercussions, a culture which
is both defense and reflection. We can all collaborate in this future.
But man's life is short and the life of the world can be almost infinitely
long.
I had thought of giving this title to my short speech: "Will poetry
be able to survive in the universe of mass communication?" That is
what many people wonder, but upon thinking closely, the answer can
only be affirmative. If by poetry one means belletristic poetry it
is clear that the world production will continue to grow excessively.
If instead we limit ourselves to that poetry which refuses with horror
the description of production, that which arises almost through a
miracle and seems to embalm an entire epoch and a whole linguistic
and cultural situation, then it is necessary to say that there is
no death possible for poetry.
It
has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on
prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip. Strangely,
Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative
height or it did so after centuries. But if you study French prose
before and after the school of Ronsard, the Pléiade, you will
observe that French prose has lost that softness for which it was
judged to be so inferior to the classical languages and has taken
a veritable leap towards maturity. The effect has been curious. The
Pléiade does not produce collections of homogeneous poems like
those of the Italian dolce stil nuovo (which is certainly one
of its sources), but it gives us from time to time true "antique pieces"
which could be put in a possible imaginary museum of poetry. It is
a question of a taste which could be defined as Neo-Greek and which
centuries later the Parnasse will attempt in vain to equal. This proves
that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always
remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul. Let
us reread together a poem by Joachim Du Bellay. This poet, born in
1522 and who died at the age of thirty-three, was the nephew of a
Cardinal with whom he lived in Rome for several years, bringing back
a profound disgust for the corruption of the papal court. Du Bellay
wrote a great deal, imitating with greater or lesser success the poets
of the Petrarchan tradition. But the poem (perhaps written in Rome),
inspired by Latin verses by Navagero, which confirms his fame, is
the fruit of a painful nostalgia for the country-side of the sweet
Loire which he had abandoned. From Sainte-Beuve up to Walter Pater,
who dedicated Joachim a memorable profile, the sort Odelette
read it if this is possible, because it is a question of a poem in
which the eye des vanneurs de blé has entered the repertory
of world poetry. Let us try to reread it if this is possible, because
it is a question of a poem in which the eye has its role.
A vous troppe legere,
qui d'aele passagere
par le monde volez
et d'un sifflant murmure
l'ombrageuse verdure
doulcement esbranlez,
j'offre ces violettes,
ces lis et ces fleurettes,
et ces roses icy,
ces vermeillettes roses,
tout freschement écloses ,
et ces oeilletz aussi.
De vostre doulce halaine
eventez ceste plaine,
eventez ce sejour,
ce pendant que j'ahanne
a mon blé, que je vanne
a la chaleur du jour.
I do not if this Odelette was written in Rome as an interlude
in the dispatch of boring office matters. It owes its current survival
to Pater. At a distance of centuries a poem can find its interpreter.
But now in order to conclude, I should reply to the question which
gave a title to this brief speech. In the current consumistic civilization
which sees new nations and new languages appear in history, in the
civilization of robotman, what can the destiny of poetry be? There
could be many answers. Poetry is the art which is technically within
the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.
Only at a second moment do the problems of publishing and distribution
arise. The fire of the library of Alexandria destroyed three fourths
of Greek literature.
Today not even a universal fire could make the torrential poetic production
of our time disappear. But it is exactly a question of production,
that is, of hand-made products which are subject to the laws of taste
and fashion. That the garden of the Muses can be devastated by great
tempests is, more than probable, certain. But it seems to me just
as certain that a great deal of printed paper and many books of poetry
must resist time.
The question is different if one refers to the spiritual revival of
an old poetic text, its contemporary restoration, its opening to new
interpretations. And finally it always remains doubtful within which
limits one moves when speaking of poetry. Much of today's poetry is
expressed in prose. Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.
Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great
works of poetry. And the theater? Many literary histories do not even
discuss it, taking up instead several geniuses who are treated separately.
In addition how can one explain the fact that ancient Chinese poetry
survives all translations while European poetry is chained to its
original language? Perhaps the phenomenon can be explained by the
fact that we believe we are reading Po Chü-i and instead we are
reading the wonderful counterfeiter Arthur Waly? One could multiply
the questions with the sole result that not only poetry, but all the
world of artistic expression or that which proclaims itself to be
such, has entered into a crisis which is strictly tied to the human
condition, to our existence as human beings, to our certainty or illusion
of believing ourselves to be privileged beings, the only ones who
believe they are the masters of their destiny and the depositaries
of a destiny which no other creature can lay claim to. It is useless
then to wonder what the destiny of the arts will be. It is like asking
oneself if the man of tomorrow, perhaps of a very distant tomorrow,
will be able to resolve the tragic contradictions in which he has
been floundering since the first day of Creation (and if it is still
possible to speak of such a day, which can be an endless epoch).
(Eugenio Montale, "Nobel Lecture",
12 Dicembre 1975)
Copyright©1997 The Nobel Foundation
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