Creative work essentially depends on two things: (1) the ability to stimulate, allow and grasp new ideas and (2) the ability to make the most of them. In the first case, we briefly have intellectual effort and attention, qualities that, even if unintentionally, are incited by the simple desire to create. In the second case, there is something more costly, and perhaps the biggest difference between the fruitful artist and the unfruitful one lies precisely in this: in the ability to put their ideas into practice, not letting them get lost and go as naturally as they came. This ability is simply the ability to act. From this it can be seen that creative work, in order to be effective, requires not only ideas, conceiving them and capturing them—something that can be done effortlessly—but it also requires a state of mind that can be summed up in a permanent readiness for action.
Tag: literature
No Matter How Good Short Poems Are
No matter how good short poems are, and no matter how fond the modern mind is of them, they alone are incapable of the great poetic effect. The latter is only achieved when the mind reaches a degree of ecstasy that requires, firstly, complete absorption and, secondly, a certain number of verses. In other words: the mind needs to be immersed in the poetic atmosphere that will lead it on the upward movement. Then, verse by verse, concentration increases, the stimuli intensify and the great effect is already being built up. In short: for the peak to impress, it must be preceded by the climb.
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.