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.
Solzhenitsyn’s Badges
There are three main differences between Solzhenitsyn and the rest of those who defend a cause through literature, or make literature to defend a cause. The first is that Solzhenitsyn, before attacking the regime he attacks, experienced it, that is, suffered it with eight years in jail and seeing countless friends, acquaintances and family members imprisoned, persecuted and shot. The second difference derives from the first: in honor of himself and those he lost, his cause is justified; this means that his literature is a response to his personal experience, in other words, his literary motivation is the most authentic there can be. Finally, this is simply it: his cause is noble, and this adjective needs no explanation. On the other hand, what do we find in the majority of those who make ideological literature? We do not need to spend many words: we find neither nobility nor knowledge of the cause; we find, in short, a fetish.
Man Becomes What He Feeds
What life shows is that, sooner or later, man becomes what he feeds. This is the fate from which he can never escape, and which can be his fortune or his disgrace. That’s why, if not innate, visualization must be cultivated continuously. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, like the boy in that beautiful Sabian symbol who, idealizing a great stone face and taking it as an ideal of greatness, becomes like it as he grows up. We all are, or rather, we can all be; before we can be, however, we have to want to be.