Οι φωνές της ποίησης

by T.S. Eliot, Άρης Μπερλής (Translator), Νάσος Βαγενάς (Editor)

Θεωρούμενος ως ένας από τους κορυφαίους ποιητές του 20ού αιώνα, ο Τόμας Στερνς Έλιοτ είναι αναμφισβήτητα και ο σημαντικότερος λογοτεχνικός κριτικός. Οι απόψεις του για τη λογοτεχνία και τη λογοτεχνική κριτική αποτέλεσαν τη βάση της αγγλοσαξονικής Νέας Κριτικής και διαμόρφωσαν καθοριστικά, και διεθνώς, τη μοντερνιστική προσέγγιση της λογοτεχνίας. Η βασική θέση του Έλιοτ περιέχεται στην πεποίθησή του ότι η λογοτεχνική κριτική θα πρέπει να συμπληρώνεται από μιαν ηθική και οντολογική οπτική. Επιμένοντας, εις πείσμα των εστέτ, ότι η μεγάλη ποίηση δεν θα έπρεπε να αξιολογείται μόνο με λογοτεχνικά κριτήρια, ο Έλιοτ υπογράμμιζε ταυτόχρονα ότι αν ένα κείμενο είναι λογοτεχνικό ή όχι θα μπορούσε να κριθεί μόνο με λογοτεχνικά κριτήρια.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Literary Criticism

263 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot

Reviews

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τρομερή διαύγεια

[Eliasdgian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο (σπουδαίος) ποιητής, κριτικός και δοκιμιογράφος Thomas Stearns Eliot παραθέτει τις απόψεις του για την ποίηση, τη λογοτεχνία και την κριτική, χρησιμοποιώντας την προσφιλή του φόρμα του δοκιμίου. Είναι οκτώ (8) συνολικά τα δοκίμια που περιέχονται στον ανά χείρας καλαίσθητο τόμο των Πανεπιστημιακών Εκδόσεων Κρήτης, προέρχονται από διαφορετικές συλλογές ("Selected Essays", 1932· "On Poetry and Poets", 1957· "To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings", 1965), κι ένα εξ αυτών (“The three voices of poetry”) “ευθύνεται” για τον τίτλο του βιβλίου.

Τα δοκίμια αποτελούσαν αναπόσπαστο μέρος του συγγραφικού έργου του T. S. Eliot, γι’ αυτό και συχνά ο συντάκτης τους υπογράμμιζε την αδιάσπαστη ενότητα της ποιητικής και δοκιμιακής του παραγωγής. Έχοντας, άλλωστε, μελετήσει ελληνική, λατινική, γαλλική και γερμανική λογοτεχνία, γλώσσα και φιλοσοφία, αλλά και εντρυφήσει στην σανσκριτική γλώσσα και την ινδική φιλοσοφία (ξέχωρα η μελέτη της μεσαιωνικής και της συγκριτικής λογοτεχνίας), ο T.S. Eliot διακρινόταν για την εμβρίθεια και ευρύτητα του πνεύματός του, γεγονός που, το δίχως άλλο, αντανακλάται στα δοκίμιά του: είτε αυτά αφορούν την ποίηση καθαυτή («Σκέψεις για τον ελεύθερο στίχο», «Τι είναι η ελάσσων ποίηση;», «Η μουσική της ποίησης», «Οι τρεις φωνές της ποίησης»), είτε τη λογοτεχνία («Άμλετ», «Τι είναι το κλασικό», «Θρησκεία και λογοτεχνία») και την κριτική («Ας κρίνουμε τον κριτικό»). Όλα τους είναι δοκίμια στοχασμού, με έντονο υποκειμενισμό και απόψεις που καμιά φορά μπορεί να δείχνουν αιρετικές ή και να ξενίζουν ακόμη (όπως επί παραδείγματι η σύνδεση που θεωρεί ότι υπάρχει μεταξύ θρησκείας και λογοτεχνίας ή η θέση ότι η λογοτεχνική κριτική θα έπρεπε να ολοκληρώνεται με κριτική που ασκείται από μια συγκεκριμένη ηθική και θεολογική σκοπιά), αλλά δεν παύουν να είναι οι απόψεις ενός ανθρώπου που δημιούργησε τομή στον χώρο της λογοτεχνικής κριτικής και υπήρξε ένας από τους ο σπουδαιότερος αγγλόφωνος ποιητής του 20ου αιώνα.

[Shiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world of a great poetic dramatist is a world in which the creator is everywhere presented and everywhere hidden...
It was an interesting and at the same time challenging essay to me. It kinda asks the reader to be aware of what he/she needs to know, before considering a poetry unclear, a poet's style less appealing than the other. And of course in order to achieve a better understanding of what one reads, one needs to analysis the poem while paying enough attention to three distinctive voices which are at times in unision with each other.
I need to go and write more surrounding it simply because I care and Eliot seems to be a good one to care about(((((:

[Amber Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Just because this thing was presented as a lecture of literary theory, I somehow came to it expecting a Frye, and found myself instead with an Eliot. Asinine on my part, yes, but even after adjusting my hopes mid-read, I can't say I was overly impressed.

Is he pretentious? You bet. Prone to tossing out unjustified declarations? Sadly, c'est ca. Also spends rather too much time on obliquely, if not outright, degrading references to Browning (and how this was useful, I'm not sure). These are my first-impression complaints. Maybe I should read it a second time and be more deliberate in finding merit - after all, it's T.S. Eliot, and I don't feel entirely comfortable putting down any of his work this way.

That's one good thing: the lecture is so short that it can be read through in a half-hour or so. He doesn't keep hashing over his points for too long. And there were some worthy exhortations to poetry-readers in the end, namely that "a language [of apparently obscure poetry]... may be worth the trouble of learning." And this, on the birth of a poem, this was my favorite part:

"There is first an inert embryo or "creative germ" and, on the other hand, the Language, the resources of the words at the poet's command.... When you have the words for it, the 'thing' for which the words had to be found has disappeared, replaced by a poem. What you start from is nothing so definite as an emotion, in any ordinary sense; it is certainly not an idea; it is – to adapt two lines of Beddoes to a different meaning – a "bodiless childful of life in the gloom / Crying with frog voice, 'what shall I be?' "

A choice few words from Beddoes, whoever he is. Three stars overall, nonetheless. I'm sorry, T-Stearns. I'll stick with your actual poetry (which makes me swoon with joyful dark shivers).
The October night comes down; returning as before / Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease...
[Portrait of a Lady. Okay, I'm really ending this now, I swear.]

[Tim Nason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars - In this transcript of a 1954 lecture, Eliot identifies three "voices" of poetry; each voice is a rhetorical stance taken by the poet to address a particular audience, even if the "audience" is only oneself.

Here are the three voices:

1. The poet talking to oneself, "– or to nobody," expressing one's own thoughts; the purpose being to achieve clarity for the writer alone, risking incomprehensibility to others. Eliot suggests that such poems could be called "meditative verse." He refers to a German poet, Gottfried Benn, and agrees with his idea of such poetry beginning with nothing more than a "creative germ" and words. "He has something germinating in him for which he must find words; but he cannot identify this embryo until it has been transformed into an arrangement of the right words in the right order." Later he states, "[The poet] does not know what he has to say until he has said it: and in the effort to say it he is not concerned with making other people understand anything." The effort of nurturing this embryonic thing is likened to being "haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; … the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon. He is going to all this trouble, not in order to communicate with anyone, but to gain relief from acute discomfort." It is important to understand this point: "If you complain [as a reader of poetry] that a poet is obscure, and apparently ignoring you, the reader, or that he is speaking only to a limited circle of initiates from which you are excluded – remember that what he may have been trying to do, was to put something into words which could not be said in any other way, and therefore in a language which may be worth the trouble to learn." This advice is especially useful to me when I think about the incomprehensibility of many of W.S. Merwin poems in "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment" (1973).

2. The poet addressing others, a group, large or small, using one's own voice or an assumed voice, i.e., the voice of a persona; consisting of a message of instruction or persuasion, or amusement. This voice may preach, it may tell a story or it "points a moral." It has a social purpose, says Eliot. The dramatic monologue uses this second voice ("the voice of the poet who has put on the costume and make-up either of some historical character, or of one out of fiction" – see Robert Browning). On this point, Eliot notes, "It was Browning's greatest disciple, Mr Ezra Pound, who adopted the term "persona" to indicate the several historical characters through whom he spoke." The epic, too, uses the second voice, as in Homer, which is "essentially a tale told to an audience."

3. The poet when creating a character, for a verse drama, for example. This third voice became of concern to Eliot as he wrote his dramas "The Rock," "Murder in the Cathedral" and others. In this voice, the poet invents speech wherein an imaginary character addresses another imaginary character. Eliot discovered that this voice differs when the work is either "dramatic, quasi-dramatic" or "non-dramatic" verse. But the main point is that "in writing verse for the stage both the process and the outcome are very different from what they are in writing verse to be read or recited." He credits Shakespeare with using a genuine dramatic voice, this third voice, in his plays, in contrast with Browning (yes, poor Browning again) where in his "Caliban upon Setebos, it is Browning's voice that we hear." Expanding on his analysis, he states that "the poet, speaking as Browning does, in his own voice, cannot bring the character to life. … When we listen to a play by Shakespeare we listen not to Shakespeare but to his characters; when we read a dramatic monologue by Browning, we cannot suppose that we are listening to any other voice than that of Browning himself." In Homer's epics, which use the second voice primarily, Eliot suggests that the third voice, the dramatic voice, may also be heard: "from time to time … we hear, not Homer telling us what a hero said, but the voice of the hero himself." And in Dante's "Divine Comedy," "we hear men and women speaking to us," that is, we hear the voice of fictional or historical characters speaking directly to one another through the poet.

Eliot digresses at the outset to ask whether poems can be addressed to only one other person. He cites poems of "Mr and Mrs Browning" that were written to one another and then published, and to the "Love Sonnets" of Rossetti that were written for one person only but were later published after being "persuaded by friends to disinter them". He also notes the epistle as another example of a poem that is supposedly composed for one person to read. It is Eliot's conclusion that "a good love poem, though it may be addressed to one person, is always meant to be overheard by other people." Another digression ventures into the term "lyric" poetry. Yet another digression discusses several finer points about the dramatic voice, with this stellar bit of advice, which applies to any kind of writing: "I can't see, myself, any way to make a character live except to have a profound sympathy with that character." This applies even to an evil person. Possible ways for the writer to express such sympathy would be to "put into that character … some trait of his own, some strength or weakness, some tendency to violence or to indecision, some eccentricity even, that he has found in himself."

Upon my first reading, I asked myself who would care about such ideas these days? Most likely additional voices have been added to the list as the decades have passed and more and more literature has been written. It is interesting, though, to view literature from Eliot's perspective, looking back from the year 1954 to the Brownings and Ezra Pound, to Paul Valéry, Rossetti, Dante, Shakespeare and Homer. The experience, for me, is similar to my recent reading about the Impressionists and Cézanne, artists who were formative and very influential yet so much has happened since the time of their explorations and discoveries.

Eliot himself asks if his listeners "have been asking yourselves what I have been up to in all these speculations. Have I been toiling to weave a labored web of useless ingenuity?" He suggests, in conclusion, "I should like to think that it might interest the reader of poetry to test my assertions in his own reading."

This little book compresses a wealth of ideas into a small space. I I gain more and more from it with repeated readings. Eliot strews his pages with off-hand remarks, each gem-like, all of which could be followed up by the reader with additional contemplation and study. His ideas would make for a valuable discussion in a reading- or writing-group, or college class or other cluster of dedicated readers and writers.

The essay also appears in "The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Vol. 7: A European Society, 1947-1953" (2018).

[Emmett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even as a TSE fan I wouldn't recommend reading this for enjoyment, no. I read this out of a present interest in his work in drama and whether that differs from his approach to poetry. He seems to be figuring it out for himself as he goes along, consciously, which give the text a rather in-process feel. There is a slightly more affable (personal? but that is a word one uses with caution where TSE is concerned), more musing style in this book (which is actually a lecture he delivered in the 1950s) that differs from the characteristic cautious prevarication readers of his criticism will be familiar with. The emphasis, repeatedly, is on 'this is how it is like for me'. It is interesting and insightful that he takes pains to differentiate between (1) the voice of the poet talking to himself and resolving that emotion/drive that causes him to write poetry, (2) the poet talking to his audience and presenting something that will be understood, and (3) the poet speaking through characters (in dramatic monologue and through characters of a play). The layers show different levels of consciousness and authorial intrusion, and the complex relationship an author has with his audience and his material/motivation. The third voice illuminates his struggles writing for the stage, in particular, spreading the poet's writing voice across acting parts of different backgrounds and attitudes, which is something he seemed to have found quite difficult.

My favourite part, though not the most instructive, is the closing comments, where TSE as a poet and a reader advises the reader of poetry to take a poet on his own terms and listen carefully:

Can you distinguish these voices in the poetry you read, or hear recited, or hear in theatre? If you complain that a poet is obscure, and apparently ignoring you, the reader, or that he is speaking only to a limited circle of initiates from which you are excluded--remember that what he may have been trying to do, was to put something into words which could not be said in any other way, and therefore in a language which may be worth the trouble of learning. If you complain that a poet is too rhetorical, and that he addresses you as if you were a public meeting, try to listen for the moments when he is not speaking to you, but merely allowing himself to be overheard ...

[Tim Nason · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this transcript of a 1954 lecture, Eliot identifies three "voices" of poetry; each voice is a rhetorical stance taken by the poet to address a particular audience, even if the "audience" is only oneself.

Here are the three voices:

1. The poet talking to oneself, "– or to nobody," expressing one's own thoughts; the purpose being to achieve clarity for the writer alone, risking incomprehensibility to others. Eliot suggests that such poems could be called "meditative verse." He refers to a German poet, Gottfried Benn, and agrees with the latter's idea that such poetry begins with nothing more than a "creative germ" and words. "He has something germinating in him for which he must find words; but he cannot identify this embryo until it has been transformed into an arrangement of the right words in the right order." Later he states, "[The poet] does not know what he has to say until he has said it: and in the effort to say it he is not concerned with making other people understand anything." The effort of nurturing this embryonic thing is likened to being "haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; … the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon. He is going to all this trouble, not in order to communicate with anyone, but to gain relief from acute discomfort." It is important to understand this point: "If you complain [as a reader of poetry] that a poet is obscure, and apparently ignoring you, the reader, or that he is speaking only to a limited circle of initiates from which you are excluded – remember that what he may have been trying to do, was to put something into words which could not be said in any other way, and therefore in a language which may be worth the trouble to learn." This advice is especially useful to me when I think about the incomprehensibility of many of W.S. Merwin's poems in his "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment" (1973).

2. The poet addressing others, a group, large or small, using one's own voice or an assumed voice, i.e., the voice of a persona; consisting of a message of instruction or persuasion, or amusement. This voice may preach, it may tell a story or it "points a moral." It has a social purpose, says Eliot. The dramatic monologue uses this second voice ("the voice of the poet who has put on the costume and make-up either of some historical character, or of one out of fiction" – see Robert Browning). On this point, Eliot notes, "It was Browning's greatest disciple, Mr Ezra Pound, who adopted the term "persona" to indicate the several historical characters through whom he spoke." The epic, too, uses the second voice, as in Homer, which is "essentially a tale told to an audience."

3. The poet when creating a character, for a verse drama, for example. This third voice became of concern to Eliot as he wrote his dramas "The Rock," "Murder in the Cathedral" and others. In this voice, the poet invents speech wherein an imaginary character addresses another imaginary character. Eliot discovered that this voice differs when the work is either "dramatic, quasi-dramatic" or "non-dramatic" verse. But the main point is that "in writing verse for the stage both the process and the outcome are very different from what they are in writing verse to be read or recited." He credits Shakespeare with using a genuine dramatic voice, this third voice, in his plays, in contrast with Browning (yes, poor Browning again) where in his "Caliban upon Setebos, it is Browning's voice that we hear." Expanding on his analysis, he states that "the poet, speaking as Browning does, in his own voice, cannot bring the character to life. … When we listen to a play by Shakespeare we listen not to Shakespeare but to his characters; when we read a dramatic monologue by Browning, we cannot suppose that we are listening to any other voice than that of Browning himself." In Homer's epics, which use the second voice primarily, Eliot suggests that the third voice, the dramatic voice, may also be heard: "from time to time … we hear, not Homer telling us what a hero said, but the voice of the hero himself." And in Dante's "Divine Comedy," "we hear men and women speaking to us," that is, we hear the voice of fictional or historical characters speaking directly to one another through the poet.

Eliot digresses at the outset to ask whether poems can be addressed to only one other person. He cites poems of "Mr and Mrs Browning" that were written to one another and then published, and to the "Love Sonnets" of Rossetti that were written for one person only but were later published after being "persuaded by friends to disinter them." He also notes the epistle as another example of a poem that is supposedly composed for one person to read. It is Eliot's conclusion that "a good love poem, though it may be addressed to one person, is always meant to be overheard by other people." Another digression ventures into the term "lyric" poetry. Yet another digression discusses several finer points about the dramatic voice, with this gem of advice, which applies to any kind of writing: "I can't see, myself, any way to make a character live except to have a profound sympathy with that character." This applies even to an evil person. Possible ways for the writer to express such sympathy would be to "put into that character … some trait of his own, some strength or weakness, some tendency to violence or to indecision, some eccentricity even, that he has found in himself."

Upon my first reading, I asked myself who would care about such ideas these days? Most likely additional voices have been added to the list as the decades have passed and more and more literature has been written. It is interesting, though, to view literature from Eliot's perspective, looking back from the year 1954 to the Brownings and Ezra Pound, to Paul Valéry, Rossetti, Dante, Shakespeare and Homer. The experience, for me, is similar to my recent reading about Delacroix and the Impressionists and Cézanne. Those artists were formative and remain influential yet so very much has happened since the time of their explorations and discoveries.

Eliot himself asks if his listeners "have been asking yourselves what I have been up to in all these speculations. Have I been toiling to weave a labored web of useless ingenuity?" He suggests, in conclusion, "I should like to think that it might interest the reader of poetry to test my assertions in his own reading."

This little book compresses a wealth of ideas into a small space. I have found that I gain more and more from it with repeated readings. Eliot strews his pages with off-hand remarks, each containing riches, all of which could be followed up by the reader with additional contemplation and study. His ideas would make for a valuable discussion in a reading- or writing-group, or college class or other cluster of dedicated readers and writers.

The essay also appears in "The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Vol. 7: A European Society, 1947-1953" (2018).

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eliot sought to recuperate and support poetic drama. The Three Voices of Poetry deals with this. Eliot maintains that each poem or work of art has a unique voice. For a work to be truly effective, the voice must be in tune to the content and vice versa. The first voice is that of the poet, speaking verbally to himself without thinking of addressing an audience. The second voice is seen in a dramatic monologue where a poet addresses himself to his addressees. The third voice is when the poet uses a make-believe character as a representative, and this character discourses with another invented character thus, letting the poet have the autonomy to articulate his opinions, speak his mind, as in poetic drama.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

By far the best sentence in this: 'I should not like to tarnish my reputation by giving any member of this audience cause to complain that I have made my discourse too intelligible.'