On Literary Terms...and Reality

There are certain literary terms which I have been using freely and uncritically for the best part of forty to fifty years, concepts which seem to have no scientific basis, if we wish to talk in terms of 'objective reality'.

I am thinking of words, phrases and concepts like "the Absurd" (Camus), "Catharsis/Katharsis" (Aristotle), "Inscape and Instress" (Hopkins), and terms like "Metaphysical" as applied to Donne and others.

Yet I think I understand the meaning of these words. I've always recognised "the Absurd", I've occasionally experienced something akin to "katharsis" when watching a Greek tragedy, Shakespeare's "King Lear" or listening to a profound blues song, and Hopkins' concept of "inscape" makes absolute sense if one takes the trouble to look closely at natural phenomena, even something as simple as a frost-covered branch, a leaf, or a hollow old oak-stump.

A sketch by  Gerard Manley Hopkins: Hampstead. 1862. Oak-stump.

"And for all this, nature is never spent;

  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things"

(Hopkins)

The Most Moving Greek Song- of all time!

It's subjective of course, and there are hundreds of songs that might qualify, but I am going to propose an old Smyrna (Asia Minor) style song by Marika Papagika:


Ti se meli esenane apo pou eimai ego?

It's a real heartbreaker. Especially when you think of the fate of the Asia Minor Greek population from Smyrna and the surrounding villages.

"What does it matter to you, where I come from?"

There are some other masterpieces of Greek song posted here.

On Bob Dylan and Retirement

This is worth a read following my posting on Little Richard (one of Bob's first influences, believe it or not).

Bob's still got some hard travelling down the line.

But are people still buying and collecting?

Little Richard plays at 78!

Rock 'n' Roll and Soul don't come any better than this...

I don't know what you've got, but it's got me

Lucille

Ready Teddy

and somewhat tasteless, but tongue in cheek...Good Golly Miss Molly 

Long Tall Sally (Live on radio, Australia, 1957)

You wouldn't think that Little Richard (born December 5, 1932) "gave up" rock 'n' roll back in 1957, after he'd played Newcastle (New South Wales). According to Johnny O'Keefe, Little Richard "opened the window of the bus and threw his jewellery into the Hunter River." Then, in Melbourne, Little Richard was "very worried about the first sputnik that was going over on the night we opened...Richard says, 'That's it. The end of the world is coming. I'm going to die in America. I'm not going to sing any more'."

He quit show business to go back to religion. Interview extract

Joy, Joy, Joy

Before too long he was rocking again. Yesterday he was 78.

Chronia Polla!

This is the song I first had as a 78: Long Tall Sally (backed with Tutti Frutti).

Titos Patrikios, Greek Poet

Titos Patrikios

An interview with Saskia Handley

and a poem, The Mountains on Poetry International Web (there are other fine poems here)

Check out other Greek poets 

Try this poem, 13-12-43, by Manolis Anagnostakis. One to read on December 13th?

Promoting UK Higher Education- in Australia (from the Archives)

"For the seriously imaginative"
with Dr. Alison Chiu, David Malouf AO and Malcolm Turnbull (Sydney, 1999).

With the current controversy about the planned increases in student tuition fees at UK universities, it is worth remembering that the UK model of student loans/tuition fees came from Australia, where the system seemed to work well and impressed Sir Ron Dearing and his visiting team (Dearing Report, 1997).

Malcolm Turnbull was a former Rhodes Scholar. Poet and novelist David Malouf taught in a British secondary school in the 1960s.

"It is important for Australians to engage the world. The great virtue of studying away from home is that it provides a wider variety of experiences. We are living in an increasingly international world", 
said Malcolm Turnbull then.

British students would do well to heed his advice nowadays. Relatively few  (1 in 200) study overseas, even for a part of their degree courses.

Some recent thoughts by Bagehot (December 16, 2010)

Other concerns