The awareness that death is never as far away as one would like, or rather that it is a near reality, instills in man a sense of responsibility and urgency that cannot otherwise be achieved. Such qualities are indispensable in great minds; without them, the scale of priorities is distorted, the act is postponed or, at the very least, not carried out with due seriousness. Great work is always preceded by the realization of its importance and the need for it.
Category: Notes
Nothing Seems as Impressive…
Nothing seems as impressive as the series of coincidences which, in frequent cases, impel man to work. The impression we get is that there is a mission for each soul, so that if it is not found, if it is not voluntarily and consciously pursued, it is in no way hindered, since circumstances ultimately force its execution. From this we can see how natural it is to accept the hypothesis of predestination. There are cases in which we come across events that are so transformative and decisive that we get the feeling that, like it or not, man, in the course of his life, always ends up becoming what he was born to be.
Poetry Should Not Be Sung
We open the window and hear from the street the emphatic assertion that poetry should not be sung. And from the street they also say how it should be recited. So we reach for a random compendium of poems on the shelf. We opened it, thinking intensely that “poetry should not be sung”. To our misfortune, however, already in the table of contents we come across chants, ditties, hymns, songs, and we have to close it immediately before our brains collapse. That is so much rational thinking! From the street, we hear that someone who sings a poem sounds like a child. It is really impressive… It is only with a lot of effort that we manage to overcome this nonsense, when we finally realize the obvious: a child sings a poem because, reading naturally, he is driven to sing by the rhythmic structure of the verses. In short, he sings it because he has not yet been spoiled by any adult.
The Obligatory Pause at the End of the Verse
If a poem is recited without respecting the obligatory pause at the end of the verse, a pause that characterizes poetic discourse itself, its structure is hidden from the listener. In doing so, it is impossible for the listener to distinguish blank verse from free verse, and both from prose. It is also impossible for him to distinguish between metrical verse, let alone define in which meter it was constructed, except in some cases by rhyme. To ignore the pause at the end of the verse is to nullify the intentional structural disturbance generated by enjambments; therefore, it is to nullify their very effect. It is to hide the harmony—or lack of it—resulting from the arrangement of the orational terms in the verses. In other words, if a poem is read with punctuation as the only reference, it is read as prose. And a poem read as prose is simply transformed into prose. It is worth reflecting on this: if that were the aim, it would be enough for the poet to write in prose what he had intentionally chosen to structure in verse—which, we hope, entailed a considerable additional effort.